I’ve watched Deal or No Deal a couple times without much enthusiasm. But on the plane from Miami to Guayaquil, they aired an episode that snubbed my skepticism of the show’s success. It seemed that the contestant just couldn’t go wrong; each suitcase she chose left her with better options for the next round, until she had worked her way down to two suitcases: $600,000 and $1,000,000. She ended up taking a deal of $750,000 rather than choose the final suitcase, and she walked away elated, not a bit disappointed that she didn’t go for the million.
That was my trip to Ecuador.
The momentum of the journey was unbelievable. Each night I’d lay in bed convinced that the next day couldn’t possibly match the one I’d just experienced. But then the next day would be insurmountably better, only to be bested again by the next day and the next day and the next day.
As such, this final hand-full of posts about Veró’s and my trip to Ecuador are my most cherished memories of an unforgettable trip.
And now for boobies . . .
I’ve been enchanted by the Galápagos Islands for years, and I didn’t think I could go all the way to Ecuador without jogging across the ocean to see them. After all, when would I ever be this close to them again?
As it turned out, however, spending just one day in the Galápagos would have cost about as much as our 12 days on the mainland. So I settled for the next best option, which meant that on our first full day in Manta, Veró, her tío Rico, and I were trundling along La Ruta del Sol (on an ironically cloudy day, not unlike our later excursion to El Templo del Sol) bound for Puerto López, a fishing town known fondly as Poor Man’s Galápagos.
Over a breakfast of pan y té, the enchantment began with a fly-by of pelicans and frigates chasing down their own breakfast of pilfered fish and squid.
Then we began a chase of our own: the search for humpback whales. Veró and I waded out into the titanium surf and boarded a whalewatching boat. The clouds and mist swabbed our faces as we headed away from shore, and what awaited us were wonders galore.
We skirted a cliff awash in white. And that’s when I saw them.
“Boobies! Boobies! Veró, I see boobies!”
Whether the other passengers spoke English hardly concerned me. I had seen blue-footed boobies and proper decorum wasn’t going to dampen my spirits or influence my word choice. Having sworn to myself that I wasn’t leaving Ecuador without seeing these birds, I couldn’t have been happier to have my quota fulfilled so early in our trip, allowing the rest of the journey to be icing on la torta.
(Left) Frigates, with both white and red chest pouches, joined the boobies to rest from their morning of snatching from the fishermen’s catch. (Right) The boobies feet were matched by the pooling waters at the base of the cliff.
Then we were out in the open sea, fishing boats and freewheeling birds at work in the distance. One bird flew a hypotenuse across the stern of our boat, and as I followed it with my camera it revealed itself as a waved albatross, another typical Galápagos resident.
I was already beyond thrilled with our outing, and we hadn’t even seen a whale yet! I wouldn’t have to wait much longer, however. As the boat bounced from wave to wave, Veró and I scanned the waters eagerly, until suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, there they were!
They slipped through the waves, bobbing rhythmically like horses on a carousel, disappearing for stretches only to reappear on the opposite side of the boat. With every upswing of their motion, our camera shutters clicked off in staccato fashion, punctuating the moment. I made sure to occasionally lower my lens and appreciate the experience without the aid of the viewfinder, but it was almost to my detriment when one of the whales suddenly breached fewer than 100 meters from the boat, giving me only enough time to yank my camera from my lap and blindly point the lens in the general direction of its grand jeté.
Turns out seeing a breach wasn’t a fluke. You might remember the following photos from a previous post, highlighting the second of two breaches Veró and I witnessed.
Poor Man’s Galápagos? Hardly. In fact, I felt like I’d won a million bucks.
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