Disclaimer: Because of the incident which happend today, I had signed an agreement with the travel agency in Santa Cruise Island 'not to complain' about what had happened and to not sue the company. I will keep my promise, but I feel it is my responsibility to not remain silent and provide this information so that other tourists to know that this can happen and to also give awareness to the order of guides in the Gálapagos that they need to revisit their protocols pertaining to safety of all visitors to the Islands. I will however, divulge the name of the guía because I hold him directly responsible to what had happened. In addition, I do not accept how he handled the incident after what had happened and I have made no promise to him or the company of guides he belongs to.
It was Monday, January 23. I woke up super early and was excited for my trip to the Gálapagos Islands! This was really my second reason for visiting Ecuador right behind learning to speak Spanish! I had 10 days to explore the Galapogos Islands. The first 5 days were to be on board a cruise boat and I didn't have plans for the other days. I was just going to play everything by ear.
My flight from Guayaquil left at 11:30am and the flight to the islands was 1 hour and 50 minutes. Gálapagos is one hour behind mainland Ecuador so you save one hour when coming to the islands - bonus!
The view from the airplane was spectacular flying into Baltra Island (one of two airports in the islands). I had signed up for a 5-day crucero (cruise) which I purchased from a travel agency in Baños a week earlier (I'll give more tips at the end of this post for looking for cruises). My flight arrived at 12:30pm and waiting for me at Baltra airport was my guía (guide), Wilson Lopez was the name of our guide for our cruise. Excursions in the Gálapagos is highly regulated and in order to preserve the natural conditions of the islands, guides were mandatory for certain activities such as daily excursions to uninhabited places including islands, volcanoes and also cruises. Their job is provide information to educate visitors about the island and ensuring simple rules while ensuring their safety.
The Gálapagos is not cheap! There is a park admission fee of $100USD you will need to pay when you arrive at the airport. There is also tight regulations about what you can and can't bring into the Islands - a lot of it is fruit. Before picking up your bags from the airport, they spread out all the bags and luggage and have specially trained dogs look for illegal content like fruit.
Baltra Island is a dry desert with nothing much going on. In front of the airport are three windmills used to generate electricity for the Island.
Buses wait for passengers to bring them to the main docks where they can take ferries to main island of Santa Cruz.
After waiting for a short time for 5 more passengers of the cruise, we departed to the main dock on Baltra island. Visitors can take ferries to one of the main islands of the Gálapagos called Santa Cruise Island which has the largest city in all the islands of the Gálapagos - Puerto Ayora.
This is a poster of where and how you can go from the Baltra airport.
We were assigned buddies for snorkeling and I was assigned to go with the German couple, Deniz and Aurelie. Snorkeling was so fun. We saw golden rays, a seal and a few white tip sharks along the way! Here is a compilation of that snorkel dive!
Trouble at Sea!
An hour or so into snorkeling, we saw that the dinghy which was patrolling us started to take people back to the boat. After the first one returned, they made a second trip and we assumed they'd make a third to get us. We saw that the dinghy never left to make that third trip and instead we saw the boat started to sail away. We thought the boat was cruising to come closer to us so we started to swim towards it. We knew there was something wrong when the boat sailed right passed us. At one point, the boat was no more than 200 yards away from us and we started to yell and wave at the boat but it continued to sail away. I don't know why noone on the boat spotted us because we were the only boat on this side of Baltra Island and we were so close at it sailed past us. There were larger boats across the waters far into the distance. When our boat disappeared into the distance, we were about 50 yards from the coast of Baltra Island and we knew we had to make some important decisions. We figured we had been out on the water now for about 2 hours when the boat abandoned us and we figured it must have been close to 5PM at this time.
Here is a picture of the slopes of Baltra Island were in contention of. This picture was taken while getting ready to embark on the snorkeling excursion.
One of our options was to go on land but the banks of Baltra Islands proved to be an obstacle for us because it was a 20 foot vertical ascent straight upwards. The other option was to stay close to the shore and wait for the boat if we assumed someone would have noticed we were missing. We were reluctant at first to start climbing because the waves were starting to get rough due to the tides changing and the rocks along the shore were sharp. We thought that failed attempts at climbing the slope would cause us to fall and really hurt ourselves. After some deliberation, we all agreed that it was our best choice to climb on land. We also knew sharks would be coming out to feed at around this time and we didn't want to be dinner. I climbed up first finding a path to go all the way up. It took us about 30 minutes to climb to the top but it wasn't easy. I remember the waves grabbing me and pulling me back into the ocean as I tried to get above on the rocks. It took me a few tries until I was able to pull myself onto shore, scraping my legs and cutting my feet as I climbed onto the shore. Luckily, noone suffered any major fall and we were on Baltra Island. We could see our boat far off in the distance. After about 45 minutes or so, it was obvious noone knew we were missing. The Island was a desert. It was barren and dry and the only vegetation was cactus like plants. It was mostly all rock. I remember landing on a thorn which sunk into my big toe pretty deep. On the Island, we saw the three windmills in the distance. We knew these windmills were close to the airport so we decided to try and make our way there. At the time, we figured it would take about 3 hours to reach the windmills (it was more like 6 or 7 hours or even more - but luckily we didn't have to find out). There was a gravel road which we decided to follow. We had a choice to take it either of two ways and we decided to take one of those ways. We didn't know if the island was inhabited asides from the airport, but we knew there must be someone at the airport. We also knew there was no city on the Island, but we knew the dock which we left to take the ferry to the boat was close to the airport on the other side.
We just buckled down and walked and walked and walked. The only things we had were our snorkeling gear (shortie neoprene suites, fins, mask and snorkel). Aurelie was lucky because she wore diving socks! Everyone was in good spirits as we made jokes along the way. The rocks on our feet were getting to be painful and at times Deniz and I put on our fins and walked like idiotic penguins walking backwards. We thought about breaking the fins to make shoes but we just toughed it out. We also thought about having to spend the night on the island if it came to it but we just kept it in our minds as we walked along the road hoping to find someone who could help us. We thought about hypothermia, but we were lucky because the sun dried us up pretty quickly and the temperature at nightime on the island was a cool 20C.
After walking over 2 hours, we stumbled into a family (a man, woman and her kid). The man was a soldier stationed in the military base which was about a 10 minute walk away. They brought us into a recreation hall next to a mess hall and gave us water. It was dinner time and 20 or so people filled the mess hall to eat (yes, we were starving even more so after watching them guzzle down food). It was odd they didn't offer us towels, blankets or clothes but we just went with whatever and waited around for about an hour until the leader (not sure what rank he was) dressed in full camouflage (and a gun) suit came in and said two things in a Spanish. He asked us in a very stern and serious manner who we were and what we're doing on his base. LOL. Denis and I looked at each other.. the gun.. and looked a little worried. Aurelie spoke the better Spanish of us all so she explained what had happened. The captain didn't respond and just walked away. Awhile longer, and a man comes into the recreational hall and says for us not to worry because he is from the Navy. Umm, ok. LOL. It was comical but we were very grateful and glad the military and navy were there to help us. The Navy man drove us to the docks where we had visited in the morning and we met up with the Captain of our boat and our responsible guía, Wilson. The Navy asked for a statement from our guía and he said he has no idea how this happend but wants to talk to us. Aurelie asked if they wanted our statement and the Navy said no. Ok, odd.. what was happening? Wilson then begins to recite his glorious speech about representing our country and said that today we did not represent our countries well. They were putting the blame of what happened on us! That's when we all started to argue. I don't know about Wilson, but when I go out with my friends in whatever country I'm in, I make sure my friends get home safe. I knew at that moment, I couldn't be part of this cruise anymore. I didn't know what options I had. I was really confused.
I couldn't have been left with better companions than Denis and Aurelie. We all kept our cool and embraced the challenge to find safety. Things could have gone real bad but we all stuck together and survived. When we returned to the boat, we were greeted by the other passengers with relief and gladness that we were all OK. We were greeted by some of the older women in the cruise who were crying; they told us they don't know what they would have done if they were left in the water. They also said they don't know if they could have made the climb up the steep banks. We all went straight to our rooms. I went to my room to calm my nerves otherwise the guía Wilson would have found my fist in his face.
The incident caused a lot friction between the crew and the passengers. For a few hours, the crew was huddled together and all of the passengers congregated in the same place talking about what happened. I found out some things later that really disturbed me. The first was that they didn't find out I was missing until 2 hours after the boat left the snorkeling area. Additionally, they found out that the German couple was missing after 1 hour after that! The most troubling part about it was that did not contact the Coast Guard or 911 when they found out we were all missing!! We could have been in the water for all they know. Before and after dinner, the crew was constantly telling me I should stay. I didn't understand why because I never said anything about leaving which led me to believe that it was a viable option to leave. At around 9:30PM, they came to me again and told me that if I wanted to leave, I would need to leave in 10 minutes. WTF?! Are you kidding me? I asked if I could stay over night to think about it but they said the boat would not be near Puerto Ayoro and I needed to make my decision now. It was an easy decision to make and 10 minutes later, I packed my backpack and left the boat.
We got on one of the dinghies and made our way to shore. It was a scary ride because I had no idea where I was or where I was going. It was also pitch black in the ocean although beautiful under the starry night sky. I had also never seen the three other Ecuadorians on the boat before so many things were going on in my mind. The coast didn't have any indication of any city because there were no city lights. I became a little worried made small talk to the three guys in my boat where we were going and why we can't see the city. They told me we were going to Puerto Ayoro. I later found out, we were docking at a dock at it would be a 50 minute ride to the city. But, during the ride I was oblivious to any of this and scenarios starting racing in my mind. Drowned Canadian found floating in the Galapagos was one of them. I began texting my friend telling her what was happening. My adrenaline was really starting to spike. I had a waterproof backpack and thought if something were to happen I'd jump in the water and use it to float but then how would I duck around the bullets? Ok, this wasn't a fun ride to the shore. I just kept my cool but I was alert. Ricardo, the guy who drove me to the city turned out to be a good guy and I made it safe to Puerto Ayoro where I met someone from the travel agency who told me they would send me to a hotel all paid for and in the morning we would talk about alternative plans for my schedule in the Galapagos.
Ricardo drove me to to La Peregrina B&B which was located on the main strip of the city. La Peregrina would become my home base in the Galapagos for the next 9 days.
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