2021 Life Logs, Day 69: The Enchanted Isles
Date: Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Weather: Sunny and Warmer; High 56, Low, 31 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Writing about the time we spent in the Galapagos during the Voyage of Windbird is taking longer than I thought it would. Maybe I am just enjoying being there so much that I don’t want to move on. I have talked with many people who have flown to the Galapagos, gotten on a tour boat for a few days, and then flew away. None of those people seem to have had the same experience that we did. Maybe it was being there on our own boat and staying for a longer period of time. Or maybe it was attention to detail and researching in the moment what we were seeing. I learned everything I could about the plants and animals there, while we were there. I carried my wildlife identification books everywhere with me. I asked questions and I wrote about everything we saw every day. Now that I am re-reading what I wrote, I want to check every little thing to make sure I had it right. It took me all day today to get through a day and a half of our five-day tour on the Sulidae. It looked like a pirate boat. It even had red sails. It was one of the most affordable five-day tour of the islands that I could find. It was not fancy, but it was perfect for us and for Heather and Jed who flew to the Galapagos to tour with us. We all became enchanted. And that sent me on a mission to find out who first called the islands of the Galapagos Las Encantadas or “The Enchanted.” There are many versions of the origin, but in the 1500’s Spanish sailors who reported that the islands appeared and disappeared right before their eyes earned the islands the name “enchanted”. To them that meant a menacing and ominous place. It was the dangerous currents and swirling mist that caused the islands to come in and out of focus, so because of that they were feared as a dangerous place. During this same time period, a bishop of Panama, Tomás de Berlanga, was on a ship that drifted off course and landed him in those islands instead of Peru. He reported seeing thousands of large galapago there. Galapago translated as turtle (tortoise) and eventually the islands were named the Galapagos Islands. I prefer to think of them as the Enchanted Isles with ‘enchanted’ carrying the meaning of magical, not ominous and menacing. Hopefully tomorrow I will make it through day three of our tour. By the way, we were on a tour boat instead of on Windbird because of the travel restrictions in the islands. We had a six-week permit allowing us to travel to only four designated islands. To go to other islands we had to hire a naturalist to travel on Windbird with us. It was much simpler, and cheaper, to go on a tour boat. And it ended up to be amongst the most treasured days of my life.
The weather here is still not enchanting. It is sunny and beautiful but today it felt too cold to enjoy my long walk with Shadow. Tomorrow and Friday look warmer with a high temp in the 50’s, BUT it is going to much windier. I guess we will see how things play out. A couple of us are going to have mid-day tea in the driveway of a friend’s home. I guess we’ll find out if a high of 50 degrees with 20 mile per hour winds feels warm. At least the wind is from the south, but it was from the south today and it did not help. Another good thing that happened today is that I got the go-ahead to have a new tankless on-demand natural gas water heater installed. Once that is done, hopefully the natural gas company, National Grid, will be able to go ahead with other energy efficient renovations on the cottage. And lastly, I enjoyed another late afternoon of reading in my car while Jonah enjoyed time on his scooter at the skatepark. That’s it for today.
