Today was relocation day, as we moved from Santa Cruz Island to San Cristobal Island. The distance between the two islands is 64 miles. To say it was an adventurous 64 miles would be a tremendous understatement.
The easiest and most economical way to get between the islands is by ferry boat. The words "ferry boat" probably conjure up images of a slow moving vessel like the Staten Island Ferry in New York or the ferry's around San Francisco or Seattle. In the Galapagos "ferry boat" has a whole different meaning. Our ferry boat was around a 36 foot boat with twin 250 HP engines and a smaller engine that I assume was a "back up". The boat at one time was probably a sport fishing or cruising vessel. It's now been repurposed to shuffle as many people as possible on the two hour journey across open waters. There were no fancy seats, just padded benches along the sides running most of the length of the boat. It reminded me of the type of boats I would see on the news smuggling Cuban refugees across the Florida Straits. Up front where there had probably once been a bedroom was now an open area where the luggage was "stored" (more like thrown).
We loaded up with around 28-30 people. Over the next two hours they would become our closest friends, even though most of them appeared to not speak English. I'm not sure who was operating the boat from on top. Both of the two young men I saw go up there looked as if they would have had to been driven to the port by their mothers because they weren't old enough to have a drivers license.
As we made our way out of the harbor it became apparent that it would be a little bouncy due to the choppy seas. As soon as we were in open waters Captain Kidd put the pedal to the metal and we were on our way!. Given the amount of time it took to cover the distance between the two islands I would assume we were merrily bouncing along at around 35 mph. After about 10 minutes Beth turned to me and said "we didn't get any kind of safety briefing and where are the life jackets".
I think the safety briefing would have been "hold on tight"! I spotted a few orange life jackets underneath the mound of luggage in the front of the boat. I told Beth that there were probably some under our benches as well, but I'm not sure. I did do a quick survey of the rest of the passengers and figured there were enough elderly women and children that if worse came to worse and there was a shortage of life jackets that I could whip about 10 of them pretty easily.
Every time we'd hit a large swell (about every 6-8 seconds) everyone would bounce a little more towards the back of the boat. I enjoyed rubbing elbows and lap dancing with Beth, not so much with the guy on the other side of me. Across the way were a couple of young backpackers. The guy was fairly large and the gal seemed a little small in stature. Every bounce she would land a little closer to him. Unfortunately for her there was a woman of not so small stature on the other side of her and every bounce brought her a little closer. After a while the poor young lady was about to disappear, only surfacing for a quick breath of air while we were air born.
For the shape we were in, we weren't in as bad of shape as the people who were sitting in the rear. In addition to being squished they were also soaking wet. Those were seats I had originally chosen, but Beth had wisely watched where the locals sat and suggested we move up.
We couldn't see where we were going, we could only stare across from us or offer a quick reassuring glance towards each other. Finally, after close to two hours Captain Kidd slowed the boat down, meaning we had safely made it!
We were quite pleased that we had survived. Heck, I've seen cowboys score 80+ points for an eight second ride on a bull that was more docile than our nearly two hour ordeal.
The journey is always part of the adventure and this was the "Mother of all Journey's".
Would we recommend it.............absolutely! Just keep in mind the journey is part of the adventure.
Would we do it again..................absolutely! Just not today, we've got to let our spine get back in alignment first.
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| Our ferry! |
