The Galápagos. Strict Rules

The Galápagos. Strict rules. Two anchors, sharks and electric rays. Clearing in by yacht. Government officials aboard Lady Mary. And how we saved our pets. We’ve arrived! The anchorage at Puerto Ayora, the most populous town in the Galápagos Archipelago, is packed with excursion ferries and yachts. Sea lions doze on the lower platform of a superyacht. We pick our way into the bay at night and pay out 40 metres of chain. The anchor bites fast on the first try. Wind on the bow, swell on the beam, and we’re rolling as if we were running dead downwind. But it doesn’t stop us sleeping ☺. In the morning we moved closer inshore and set two anchors. Now our bow is pointing into the surf, so we should be tossed around less. But we’ll swing around more between the two chains. Reef sharks dart around alongside. After our encounter with a shark pack the day before we arrived, at first we take these for baby sharks. But a closer look shows they’re a different, smaller species, with black tips on their fins. There’s a whole bunch of them here. Curious sea lions and phlegmatic turtles also swim past from time to time. The jetty at the archipelago’s main port ./ The easy way to get a visa The captain dashed over to the port captain’s office first thing, and now we’re waiting “until after lunch” for the government officials to arrive. The Galápagos are part of Ecuador. We drew Ecuador’s coat of arms on a Colombian flag with a marker pen—and the newly minted flag went up to the starboard spreader. Below it, a yellow flag: ready for inspection! Incidentally, a good half of the yachts proudly fly the Colombian flag instead of Ecuador’s, and nobody seems bothered by it. At three o’clock Latin American time (which means almost four), a whole football team of officials turned up: a good-natured agent, a vet, a customs officer, an immigration officer bedecked with medal ribbons, a doctor, an agronomist, a diver, the water-taxi driver, and the person in the boat... that seems to be everyone. Whether the young woman was the agronomist or the doctor—that is the question. Honestly? We’d braced ourselves for a search and were wondering whether they would empty out every cupboard, or merely discover Hatter and Alejandro bricked up inside tin cans and put us in prison for violating the plant-import regulations. Hopefully they’d lock us up together with our pets. Aloe juice is excellent for healing wounds :). And here, for now, is a map of the Galápagos. We’re right in the middle, between the giant tortoise’s backside and the little red bird’s tail. Yes, that’s exactly where we are 🙂 But the agent said: “Nope, we’re not going inside—it’s fresher out here!” and settled himself in the cockpit. The whole company began joking around, sending me down to the saloon to fill in the paperwork: after all, Andryukha had told them that he had a personal secretary, who was also the first mate, who was also his wife. Leaving the captain to bask in the glory of a slave owner, the secretary surreptitiously set up a hidden camera in the hatch and would have filmed the whole company (including the man with the medals), had it not been for the captain’s firm backside, which rose out of the companionway directly in front of the lens and stayed there throughout the entire conversation. Formalities The diver went under Lady Mary’s scrubbed hull and gave us a thumbs-up. We’d done a fine job cleaning it the day before, when the sharks had nearly eaten us. The doctor, vet and agronomist chose not to spoil such a lovely evening through fanatical observance of protocol. The immigration and customs officers could scarcely have seen every crew member closely enough to compare us with our passport photos. The company declined to go inside the yacht they were supposed to inspect. Having received all the paperwork from the “secretary,” they waved goodbye and vanished into the depths of the water taxi. They promised to send a sewage man fumigator the next day, who, for 120 bucks, was supposed to launch a gas attack against the yacht’s invisible insects. The nine-person team departed for shore after the “inspection” We waited for the sewage man until lunchtime the next day. But he never appeared—and still hasn’t. So the crew, satisfied that they had done their duty, went ashore. Summary of the formalities These were the easiest Galápagos formalities we’d ever heard of. They say they’re currently snowed under with work here: all the tourist vessels urgently need to have their licences renewed. The company of officials did not, however, look run off their feet by public service. But you don’t get this lucky every time, so see our serious Post on the formalities, documents, costs and entry requirements for the Galápagos (coming soon). And that scattering of red things on the bollard—they’re Galápagos crabs . Instead of an epilogue Alejandro and Hatter (an agave and an aloe) were extracted from the sealed tins labelled “Milk” twenty-four hours later, alive and almost unharmed. “It’s a good thing you didn’t let Dad leave our pets in Panama, Mum. Otherwise he’d be in sooo much trouble now!” Nastya drawled. “Ye-es, Dad would really have got it from Mum!” Lada thoughtfully agreed. Meanwhile Andryukha, unaware that the yacht was a matriarchy, cried out from the deck: “Girls, look, baby manta rays are swimming past—about 30 of them!” We dashed up on deck. And sure enough, there they were! Baby mantas or manta tots—we still haven’t decided what the young of enormous manta rays (commonly known simply as rays) should properly be called. Once the nursery school had gone ahead, the nanny manta followed solemnly behind, flapping her wings, about the size of a small bedsheet. Hello, Galápagos. ....................... More about who else swims between our anchors and roams the streets of the Galápagos—in our next report. The internet still wouldn’t let us upload our little video of the cheerful locals to Instagram :(. Life to you all! Sea lion: “I’m sleeping here...”