You don’t really need light and water do you…?

Let me talk about comfort. I can no longer deal with scuzzy camp-sites, taps hanging off walls, mosquito nets with holes on, walls with holes in, resident geckoes, or any other wildlife inside my bedroom. Don’t ask me to, I really can’t.

I need a toilet that works, a shower that pushes out a consistent stream of at least tepid water, a bed with some kind of linen, and if it’s really hot, an air-conditioner that works and doesn’t sound like a Boeing 747 taking off. I need food that I can eat with confidence and a supply of potable water. In other words I am a namby-pamby, middle-aged westerner.

So the next few days aboard the Mary Anne were kind of interesting for me. To cut a long story short, the generator was only working partially from when we boarded, and on the afternoon of the fourth day it stopped. Completely. The engine was ok, so we were still able to move, but no power for lighting, cooking or air-con, and for a few hours even the water stopped. I refer you back to the beginning of my last para. We were on the west side of Isabela island, about the furthest we could be from the main port on Santa Cruz. It was not good.

We saw this amazing lava field at Punta Moreno, Isabela, in the morning of the fourth day. The field runs between the Sierra Negra and Cerro Azul volcanoes. The flows are about 1000 years old and broken fragments often make a metallic sound when you step on them. These fragments are known as clinkers. Candelabra cactus (Jasminocereus thouarsii) in the foreground.

However. The crew were amazing, working so hard through the night to try and fix it (they didn’t). On the first night without power they took our dinner by panga (aka dinghy/zodiac) to our sister ship, The Passion, cooked it and brought it back. We ate dinner under the stars with no noise apart from desultory chatting. It was stressful (what’s going to happen, how do we cope with this) but beautiful. At the end of the evening, though, even the emergency lighting failed, and we felt our way gingerly down the steep steps to our cabins. At this point it was very, very quiet and very, very dark. I was glad of my £2.50 LED camping torch, thrown into my luggage at the last moment.

 

The following morning a power line is somehow rigged between us and the Passion, and the emergency lighting and water are back on. Huge inward sigh of relief. In the afternoon a spare part arrives by speed-boat. But will it work?

By the evening, still no power, so we are panga’ed over to the Passion and for a joint meal with the passengers there, the wine flowing freely in more than one sense. It was really interesting to see the inside of a modern boat: very beautiful, a lot more spacious than ours – but, to me, Passion-less. As a fellow traveller murmured to me,’ It’s just like being in a large apartment’. Our boat is a proper boat – if only it was working. Then, the lights flicker on across the water. It’s fixed! Another, happier, panga ride under the stars, spotting the southern cross and enjoying the breeze on our faces, and a release of tension as we boarded and made our way to cabins with lights and taps and toilets that worked.

Those two days were an object lesson in how much I rely on creature comforts. I wasn’t the only one, there were others arguably more stressed-out than me. But I have to acknowledge that this is how I am now, no matter how much I would rather believe otherwise. That’s a challenging pill to swallow, particularly when I look at the wider world and how much hardship others are enduring on a daily basis. I am not proud of myself. And maybe I can change in the future. But perhaps, for now, I can just accept that I am who I am, and that’s ok.

See my website www.anniegaphotography.co.uk/galapagos for more Galapagos images or contact me for licensing. All words and images ©Annie Green-Armytage. Re-blogging and link-sharing on social media is permitted with full accreditation; no other reproduction of any kind permitted without written permission.