BLOG 8: Galapagos

Unmitigated calamityfiascodisasterbacle would be the term for the Galapagos at any a rate, we weren't there 2 days before the Ecuadorian park and customs slapped a fine on every boat in the world arc, real banana republic stuff, the park law had only been passed the Tuesday before we arrived and the organisers of the arc weren't informed. Everyone was quite irate. The options were pay the fine and get your boat cleaned by a local dive company 60 miles out or leave. On principal Derry opted for the latter of the two and making for French Polynesia. . Also hypocritically the locals had cats and dogs which I'm sure is not conducive to the equilibrium of a fragile habitat, making up that law is kind of like closing the gate after all the cattle have got out.

The 3 days we were there were pretty amazing, there is not much growth over head height, but there is a profusion of wildlife from the beaches packed with sea lions and their pups, to the iguanas on the rocks, gangs of turtles grazing algae in the shallows, blue footed boobies and the fearsome frigate birds circling overhead,  annoying horseflies in the shade (I'm wondering if Darwin's horse is to blame there for introducing those bad buggers), and murders of sharks in the deeper  waters. With regards to the human element on the Island I was quiet surprised, I expected to find David Attenborough type characters sitting on the beach in khakis making notes and sketches on the environs while intermittently puffing thoughtfully on the stem of a pipe, instead the town had an atmosphere like Cork on rag week. The university of San Francisco have a facility there so there were hundreds of young students, then there were the young surfers from Ecuador coming to ride the breaks, the place was hopping from sun up to sun down. So with our usual Solipsistic Invincibility drinking shields up we made for the local watering hole, as usual we arrived in on a full moon so Johncanoe was in flying form as were the rest of us.

Anyway after saying our goodbyes to John and Roddy, Don Cian and I rejoined the boat for the transpacific crossing. We knew that it would be arduous but nothing can prepare you for a voyage like that, there is nothing to compare it too. You know that episode of Father Ted where they go on a caravan holiday, just imagine a caravan holiday with 5 people where you don't get out of the caravan. It's been a bit of a big pregnant mammoth of a trip since the Panama canal, 7 days to Galapagos and 24 to the Marquesas, we also didn't get any trade winds so we bobbed around in the blistering heat with the constant crash banging of loose rigging. At mid day the deck was hot enough to cook your lunch on, when becalmed like that there is a certain pervading apathy, the mind just absorbs the encircling horizon and time becomes irrelevant as there is no perceivable change to mark the passing of the days, it's a null time, limbo, a sailors purgatory. We prayed that the next day would be different, we even tried whistling up some wind. We did catch a Sail fish at the start of the voyage, it really is the tastiest fish I've ever had. Less meaty than a marlin but flaky like cod with all the flavour of sea bass. It was lovely fried and then baked in a mix of flour, cayenne pepper, salt and cracked black pepper with a slice of lime. Another compounding factor of the voyage was that we've been on water rations since the mid Atlantic as we don't have a generator, so salt water showers, baby wipe showers and swims were  the order of the day. You get a certain cloying odour of tangy, salty crispiness after a week, and your hair becomes like a bail of straw on your head from sun and salt. Between the 5 of us we only used around 270 litres of water over 24 days. Basically drinking water and cups of tea. Everything else you use salt water for, cooking, cleaning dishes and brushing your teeth. Water actually was what we had the most of by the end with enough to left to go to Japan if we got the notion, everything else was a different story we were right down to bare cupboards and a couple of hours of diesel in the tanks which we saved for motoring in. On the last days instead of getting trade winds we got nightly squalls with winds coming every which way, the build up to these squalls is pretty ominous. First thing you notice is the wind really drops, and the whole boat goes limp, the humidity rises perceptively and the darkness gets deeper as the stars get blotted out by a monstrous inky black cloud, there is a long pregnant period of waiting with nothing you can do knowing that once it's on you probably have 2 minutes before your in 30 to 40 knot gusts. The first indication of the onset is that the wind starts running towards the cloud and if you aren't prepared you start running towards the maelstrom when all you really want to do is sail away, the first night we were at the mercy of the squall as we had our parasailer up and we could only run with the wind which took is right into it. As it gusted stronger we struggled on the deck to snuff the sail with lightning hitting the water around us, giving us breezes of hot air, ozone and burned salt. Despite all that it was invigorating and we relished the change, the next night we were more prepared and used the winds to go on a beam reach racing towards Hiva Oa through the wind, the driving rain and the waves. Compounding all this excitement for the last 5 days we had no autopilot the rudder sensor on the unit had started to malfunction so all our watches were steering watches.   As Hiva Oa appeared in the gloom, land was really a sight for sore eyes, the smell of it in the wind was like incense to us, like the strong smell of spring, it even overpowered the all ready strong smell of ourselves. Again we arrived on a nearly full moon at night, in total we had done over 3,700 nautical miles over the same stretch of ocean that the survivors of the whaling vessel that was destroyed by Moby Dick sailed across over 80 days only their story was a little more fraught with calamity.

The next day we had a real shindig on the boat with some real genial South Africans we had met earlier in the day by the time we were in our cups and into the swing of things we had 4 dinghy's alongside. It was good to see people again after so long. We Hadn't anticipated the bottom being so silted up in the anchorage and with the full moon and low tide we started to touch the bottom, so at 3 am we reset the anchors while we were completely legless. And then once we awoke in the morning we did it again....properly. We went exploring and walked up and down every hill we could find to stretch the legs. We felt like an astronauts, our legs have started wasting from the lack of movement. You can be forever trying to find anything in French Polynesia as nothing is signposted or hasn't been signposted since the 70's, we tried to find some petraglyphs further up the valley from where we were but met intersecting roads on the track wrongly we always took the high road, someone really should have taken the low road. We ended up in dense forest bush bashing our way onwards until we reached a banana plantation and a rickety shack. Well the trip around the island in the 4x4 proved more fruitful, if you thought the death road in Peru was scary the roads here are something else, clinging to sheer sided cliffs and valleys was bad enough but then you find yourself glued to the edge when you meet an oncoming vehicle. It makes the Ring of Kerry like the Autobahn or the runway for a Jumbo Jet. We made it to the tikis on the other side of the island after the hair raising drive, the Polynesians worked in stone creating platforms for their rituals. the Tikis are the largest here among all the islands, standing 2.63 metres. They are quite strange shapes, it's interesting the way other cultures interpret the human form. Most of the tikis have abnormally big eyes and square broad features. It was probably a place where they performed human sacrifice and cannibalism. Apparently the indigenous populations of these island had no other recourse but to turn to cannibalism as there was serious competition for resources. The islands had quite large populations numbering in the tens of thousands  before westerners arrived bringing religion and disease. On captain cooks return to French Polynesia the population had gone from some 200 thousand to 2 thousand. Meaning one in a hundred survived the transition. Happily they have managed to retain their language and traditions and they are very proud of their heritage. We should take a leaf from their books and be proud of our own. The Celtic traditions and affinity with the spiritual, nature and the seasons, have been subsumed gradually in Ireland, the meanings have been forgotten or changed and twisted. Whatever happened to our own tikis, the sheilanagigs? Probably locked up somewhere because they are too indecent for modern sensibilities. France seems to be taking good care of its colonies there is no great economic depression here and everyone seems to make ends meet. We made friends with the owners of the local pension and to mark the trip Cian and I both got Polynesian tattoos symbolising our trip and what it meant to us. We started a flood of business for the artist. The Polynesian tattoos are pictographical, every shape has a meaning, there are tattoos for everything that happens over the period of someone's life. Some people here look like they were dipped in tattoos and rather than being a stigma it's an art and of great importance each individuals tattoos tells the story of their lives and their beliefs.

After Hiva Oa we started touring around the different Islands, firstly we made for the southernmost island in the island chain Fatu Hiva. We anchored in the most beautiful anchorage you have ever seen, lush green pinnacles encircled by sheer cliffs and vertical mountains, it's hard to explain because the topography is a bit unreal. The anchorage is called Le Baeis des Vierges, the bay of virgins, but originally it was called the bay of penis by the locals. Probably more apt, it was a pretty phallic bay with all those pinnacles.  The walks there were tough, the road up the hill never seemed to end at times all in the blistering mid day sun. The next day we found a lovely arboreal covered track, that led up to a beautiful waterfall and swimming hole and a 30ft jump. We had a grand old time frolicking in the luxury of the sweet fresh water. We even went the next day after a heavy downpour, it wasn't so idyllic then the waterfall was hammering down and the pool was roiling and boiling but we still went for a swim. The next Island was different but nice nonetheless in a different way, Don and I took our hammocks ashore tied up under some safe coconut trees and had a barbecue and bonfire on a lovely sandy beach. It was a nice little shin dig we had a few people from other boats, later on in the evening we whipped the guitar out and sang  few songs. Then we anchored up in Ua Pou which had a nice break for us to go surfing on. We also had our first run in with No No flies, they can swarm on you as thick as midges the only difference is instead of sucking your blood the munch on your skin incising innumerable tiny holes all over you. Well that's about it folks, right now we are on our way to Nuka Hiva which has the 2nd or 3rd biggest waterfall in the world and then on to the Tuamotos, the atolls  between the Marquesas and Tahiti.