Episode 17: Voyage to the Galápagos

Mary Herendeen:

Imagine an ecological wonderland with seemingly otherworldly plant and animal life that exists in no other place on earth. Charles Darwin described this beautiful and inspiring place as a little world within itself. Today, we set sail to what early sailors called The Enchanted Islands. OK, I won't keep you guessing. We are headed to the Galapagos.

Welcome to Traveling with AAA. I'm your host, Mary Herendeen. We are joined by award-winning travel journalist Don George. Don is editor of Geographic Expeditions online magazine, host of the National Geographic Live series, former travel editor of San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle, and co-founder of Book Passage’s Travel Writers and Photographers Conference that's held annually in California. In his 4 decades of travel writing, he has visited over 90 countries on 5 continents and authored a book about these travels, The Way of Wanderlust. Don recently wrote the article, Enchanted Voyage, featured in AAA Westways and Explorer magazine, all about his cruise to the Galapagos. Welcome, Don. We are honored to have you with us today.

Don George:

Thank you so much. I'm really honored to be here and talk about that wonderful voyage to that enchanted place.

Mary:

Oh, I read the article. It was beautiful. Don, for those who don't know, where are the Galapagos Islands?

Don:

They're located off the coast of Ecuador, and it’s a few hours to fly there from Ecuador. They're quite isolated out in the ocean, which is partly why they have such unique characters. They're far away from any other land mass.

Mary:

Yeah, and undisturbed by anything else, it sounds like. Now, why are they so significant? What's their historical importance?

Don:

They have been a repository for all kinds of unique animals and other kinds of species that have ended up there one way or another. And because the islands are so remote, they've been able to develop unimpeded and undisturbed. So all kinds of unique features have evolved there. They're famously where Darwin went on his voyage around the world, stopped for a few weeks, and studied them, especially the finches. That's where the seeds for his theory of natural selection were planted. He noticed that the finches on different islands had developed different ways of dealing with their environments and he thought, “That's really interesting. What's that all about?” The more he investigated it, the more he realized they had responded to changes in the places where they lived so that they could live more easily. It's a fascinating laboratory to visit even today. It's incredible.

Mary:

It sounds like it. The photos were stunning. Just the wildlife that you see there is unreal. Now, you recently returned from the Galapagos, but this wasn't your first trip. Could you tell us about your first trip? Some 20 years ago?

Don:

Yes, it was 20 years ago. I went there when I was a young travel journalist, and I brought my family with me. My kids were both teenagers at the time and I didn't know what to expect. I was just blown away by the magnificence of the wildlife. What immediately affects everybody is that the wildlife hasn’t learned to be afraid of human beings. You'll be walking on a trail, and you'll come upon a blue-footed booby in the middle of the trail, and the blue-footed booby will look up at you and kind of go, “Hi, nice to see you. Carry on, go on your way.” And you just sort of step over them, or you step around them, and they don't fly away.

They're not scared. They don't know to be scared. So you have this wonderful new interaction with wildlife. For my kids and me, it was totally mind-opening and heart-opening. My daughter is actually now a marine biologist, and she says that she became a marine biologist because of one afternoon that we spent in the Galapagos, where she became a sea lion for an afternoon. We were snorkeling in the water, and these sea lions just adopted her, and they began swimming around her and somersaulting over her. That experience really changed her life. And so, the Galapagos can have that kind of life-changing effect on you.

Mary:

I imagine. I imagine just being immersed in that and experiencing something that you would have in no other place. That's incredible. Now, what did you hope to discover on this recent trip?

Don:

First, I was wondering if the Galapagos had changed very much because 20 years is a long time, and a lot has happened on our planet in those 20 years. And so, I was curious if the sort of wonder that I had felt back then would still be present. At the same time, I was wondering how I had changed as a human being in those 20 years, and would I still be alive to that wonder and that sense of magnificence that I'd felt on the first trip. So, I was curious about both of those. And then the ship that I was on, the Celebrity Flora, is a newly renovated, beautiful ship designed purely for cruising the Galapagos. So I was really curious about that too, and what that experience would be like.

Happily, I discovered that the Galapagos are still amazing and full of magnificent things and that my heart is still beating and still alive to the wonder of the world, too. My mind was, again, reawakened and re-energized by being in touch with that wildlife and special spirit of the islands—it was a fantastic experience.

And then the ship is incredible. The ship was clearly designed for that environment, and everywhere you went on the ship, you felt like you were in touch with the world around you. It was so special. The people on board, of course, were also very special, very much in touch with the world around them. Whether they were passengers or crew, they were there because they loved the Galapagos. You had this feeling, and I say this in the article, but it was almost like a religious experience—we were all there to worship the Galapagos. You had this communal feeling of we are in a very special, sacred place. Let's all celebrate it together.

Mary:

That's amazing. It sounds like you wanted to check in on yourself, so the personal side, and also the professional side of what the Celebrity Cruises were doing to make that a special experience for all travelers.

Now, how did they create that, “We're all here to just really immerse ourselves and love this beautiful place.” What did Celebrity Cruises do with the Celebrity Flora to create that type of experience and ensure its ecological preservation?

Don:

Yeah, they did a really great job. There was so much glass and an open feeling in my cabin. Twenty years ago, when I cruised the Galapagos, I had a little traditional 3-foot diameter porthole in my cabin, and that was what I was looking at the world through. This time, I had a floor-to-ceiling, completely wide-open window, so basically, the Galapagos was in my bedroom. And when I was in bed, I was in the Galapagos. That was just magnificent, and all the public rooms were designed with the same feeling of openness. They also incorporated all kinds of natural elements from the local environment in the furniture and amenities.

You really felt like you were surrounded by the Galapagos. And then there were some invisible things that I really appreciated. The one I just love is that they had come up with a new anchoring system to keep the boat stabilized and not moving without actually using physical anchors. In the past, physical anchors have caused a lot of ecological damage, and so to reduce that or to get rid of that is really a remarkable achievement. I love that they did that. There were other things like the menus used locally sourced foods, so we were eating sort of the world around us. We were partaking in the world around us in whatever we were doing, and that made me feel very happy.

The crew was just spectacular, from the captain to the master of ceremonies on board who would give us lectures every night about what we were going to see the next day. All of the staff as a whole were mostly from the islands, so you had that feeling of being surrounded not just by the wildlife, but by the people of the island and the culture of the island as well. They were so respectful and passionate about the islands in all of their interactions, whether it was formal speeches that they were giving or just speaking with your waiter at dinner about what you'd seen earlier in the day. The waiter would get so passionate and enthusiastic about it and tell you his own experience that every single moment I was on this ship, I felt like we were just in harmony with the Galapagos and celebrating the Galapagos. That really just enhanced the wonder and enchantment of the experience on a daily level.

Mary:

It sounds like it. It sounds like a first-timer could go on this cruise and really walk away knowing and loving the islands. Am I right?

Don:

Absolutely! Oh my gosh, I believe all the passengers on the ship except for me were first-timers, and everyone had an amazing experience. One of the things I loved was that as I got to talk to people during the course of the cruise, I realized that everyone had brought sort of a different dream with them, something that they really hoped would happen, and they weren't sure if it would or not. And day by day by day, I was hearing how those dreams were coming true. And that was so special. That was such a wonderful part of the trip.

Mary:

I'd love to hear about some of those dreams. What were the other travelers sharing with you that they hoped to see or experience?

Don:

One of the dreams, for example, was a lovely young woman on the cruise who really wanted to swim with sea turtles. She really wanted to have that experience because on land, they’re kind of lumbering and awkward, and we don't think of them as being elegant or agile, but in the water, they're incredibly agile, and they just flow right along. They're like poetry in motion. It's so beautiful.

One day, near the end of the cruise when we were all underwater together, her boyfriend started pointing excitedly. And we all looked into the blue depths of the water in the distance, and suddenly these sea turtles just came out of the murk toward us, and you could just see them approaching us. It was so exciting. And then she just swam with the sea turtles for a long time, and she swam and swam and swam. Finally, she emerged above the surface of the water, and the smile on her face was as big as the whole world. An incredible huge smile—her dream had come true.  

Mary:

That sounds amazing! I was on a trip to Hawai‘i and I had an opportunity to see the sea turtles, and to your point, they're lumbering, laying around on the sand. But while snorkeling, I was able to swim alongside a few of them, but it’s nothing like what you're saying. You can definitely see that there's fear, and I couldn't imagine becoming one with the sea life and those animals. Just so incredible.

Now, you write about the Galapagos beautifully in an article in Westways and the AAA Explorer magazines. Could you tell us about what you saw when you first stepped off the boat onto one of the islands? Paint a picture for us, or maybe through that giant window in your cabin?

Don:

Well, the first great moment was we have these zodiac boats that transport you from the main ship to the shore. We got onto the shore, and there's just this beautiful, pristine environment spreading out in front of you. One of the really important things to know about the Galapagos is that human interaction there is really carefully monitored and controlled, so whenever you're on an island, you're with a naturalist, a certified government naturalist. There are certain prescribed trails that you have to stay on, which is perfect because you don't want to harm and disturb the wildlife, which is one of the reasons why you have that wonderful interaction with them.

So, we arrived on the shore with our naturalist, and there was this wonderful big spreading beach. Beyond it, there were some mangroves, and there was some green vegetation, but just to the left of us, there was a trio of snoozing sea lions. They were just sprawled out on the beach, having the nap of their lives in the sun, and it was so enchanting and magical. Immediately on my first trip off of the boat, bam, there were these sea lions right there and we walked down the beach, and there were more and more of them. Every once in a while, one of the sea lions would open a little tiny sleepy eye and sort of gaze at us under their big, long, beautiful eyelashes and kind of go, “Oh OK, there are some humans here,” and then just go back to sleep. And so immediately from the very beginning, you had this sense that one, the wildlife isn't afraid of us at all and two, it's everywhere.

There were so many sea lions on the beach, and then we began walking and we saw these great iguanas, some birds, and blue-footed boobies and red-footed boobies. Suddenly, just this whole kind of wonderful wilderness of wildlife began to come to life all around us. That was the first day and it really never stopped. Every day there was more and more of that. It was just so spectacular. It kind of lifted my soul. We’ve all been in a pandemic for a while, so to be in this incredibly pristine environment where the world just seemed full of wonder, beauty, hope, and optimism was really a healing experience.

Mary:

It sounds like it. It sounds like that wildlife experience, the vegetation, and all that is like the environment inviting you into their world, not you inviting animals into yours. I'm just picturing this with the guide that you're walking around, and it's like, “We are treading on their territory and tread lightly, be careful and don't disturb it.” That's amazing.

Now, these animals just sound incredible. We used to have an iguana, and those things get huge! Could you tell us about some of your most meaningful encounters? Maybe with one of the animals, if it wasn't an iguana, which was it, and tell us about it.

Don:

The iguanas were pretty amazing. There were land iguanas and marine iguanas, which in and of itself is really fascinating. The marine iguanas basically exist in the water, but they're fine on land too. But they spend most of their time in the water. Then the land iguanas are inland. And just to go back to what you said, I really did feel like I was a guest in their land. Clearly, this is their territory, their home, and they're allowing us to be there. You feel really privileged. It's a real honor and responsibility to be there, and to treat them with respect and care. So, we're viewing the bird life, the iguana life, and it’s so amazing. Also, there are the Sally Lightfoot Crabs, which are these brilliant red-orange Sally Lightfoot Crabs.

One thing I remember distinctly is on one of the islands, we came upon this land iguana, and they loved to eat these cactus leaves. And usually, you'll see them on all 4 legs eating cactus leaves that have fallen onto the ground. But this one iguana, evolution in action, had figured out how to lift himself up on his 2 legs to reach the more tender, delicious cactus leaves up in the air. So, we came upon this iguana that was just stretched up on 2 legs with his other forelegs kind of just in the air, balancing a little bit on this cactus leaf. He was chopping very contentedly away at the cactus leaf, just having this wonderful feast.

One of the members of our group was a veteran photographer who'd been all around the world taking photos, and he was in heaven when he saw this. He was saying, “I've never seen this before, anywhere. I can't believe I'm going to get a photo of this. I'm so excited.” He was snapping, snapping, snapping, snapping photos, and it was a thrill for all of us. It was something I'd certainly had never seen. None of us had seen. Even the naturalist was like, “Oh my God, I've only seen this once before. I've been doing this for 20 years.” That was an amazing sight to see this iguana that had figured out how to raise itself up so it could get the more tender, delicious leaves.

Then some other encounters. I had my own underwater encounter with a sea lion, which was just fantastic. The sea lions are so playful, they'll come right up to your mask, and then they'll just zoom right over you, or they'll zoom right by you, or they'll somersault over you. They just love playing. And you feel like you're with a bunch of 5-year-olds, and they're just messing around with you and having the time of their lives, totally accepting you into their world.

Then I had a really close encounter with a great land tortoise. They’re hundreds of years old. I adopted this tortoise in my mind and thought, “This is my tortoise.” I just love watching it move so slowly, and it would extend its head so slowly, and you could watch its wrinkled neck getting longer and longer. Then it seized upon some really beautiful shoots of grass, and you could just hear this kind of quiet, contented munching, this num num num sound. It was so endearing and so magical. I said to the naturalist, “How old do you think this tortoise is?” And she said, “We really have no idea. Maybe 150 years old. Who knows? Because we haven't been tracking them that long. So, now we'll know because we started tracking the age of the tortoises, but there are some here we don't know how old they are.” And for me, there was just that sense of here's a fellow sentient being that's been around so long and embodies such wisdom and grace. It was really transporting to be in such a close encounter with that tortoise.

Mary:

That really is incredible, and you really do paint a beautiful picture, Don. It's taking me there. Now, this seems like a great time to take a quick break, but don't go away. We'll be back shortly with more about the Galapagos and Don George. Thank you.

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Mary:

Welcome back to Traveling with AAA. Our special guest today, again is travel journalist Don George, who's telling us all about one of the most unique places on Earth, the Galapagos. Don, welcome back. Now, you were sharing with us that you sailed on Celebrity Cruises and the Celebrity Flora. And I'm hearing about what life was like aboard the ship. Anything else that you could share about the magic that went into creating this beautiful kind of indoor and outdoor space on the ship?

Don:

Yes, one of the things that you don't think about so much is just how integral a role like the master of ceremonies and the staff of the ship play in the atmosphere that comes to life on a cruise like this. One nice thing is it's a small ship. There's 100 passengers maximum, so there's a pretty intimate feeling. It's a tiny village of people, which is also really nice. You pretty much get to know everybody on at least like a nodding relationship with all the passengers. There's open seating, which is nice because in some formal cruise settings, there isn’t open seating. Having open seating allowed you to just sit with whoever you wanted to sit with. You could make new friends or stay with the group you had already formed friendships with, and that was really nice.

Then there were evening lectures where the staff would tell us about what was going to happen the next day and they would give us all kinds of great background information. Before that, we would always have some sort of special cocktail of the day that had a Galapagos theme to it. Everybody would have their cocktail and we'd all share what had happened to us during the day, the adventures we'd had, and the wonders we'd seen. Then a staffer would get up and give a really great lecture.

There was this wonderful ambiance of intimacy and familiarity, very relaxed cruise feeling, casual wear. All of that contributed to the feeling of really having a good time, that we were all there to have a good time. This was not a cruise that was about a fancy Broadway show or some kind of a spectacular, gambling side of the ship, or something. It was really all focused on, “We're here to worship the Galapagos. We're here to celebrate the Galapagos.” That feeling infused the cruise from the moment you got on the ship, and so every time, every day, it got better and better and the staff was integral to that. The excursions that we planned were, of course, really perfect. You could do a land excursion, or you could do an underwater excursion. There were different opportunities and different sort of levels of activity. If you wanted to walk for 3 hours, there was that option. If you wanted to walk for 1 hour, there was that option. If you just wanted to sit on the beach, there was that option. It kind of was tailored to all kinds of different people.  

It was also very, very thoughtfully arranged in that sense, too. It's not just the magnificent architecture and the notion that they're not using anchors and those kinds of things. But the care that went into the itinerary, the onboard atmosphere, the offerings that were given to the passengers, and the atmosphere that created interaction between staff and passengers, and passengers themselves, all contributed to making the trip so enchanted.

Mary:

It sounds like everything that went into it was very purposeful and very meaningful. I can imagine having so many people around to witness and share that experience, like you said, “All there to worship.” You've mentioned that before, the worshiping. In fact, you've described travel as your religion. What do you mean by that?

Don:

Thank you. You know, it really is. I feel when I'm out in the world discovering things, I am my best person. I feel, in lots of ways, I'm the most alive that I am, I'm the most excited. I'm becoming a bigger, better person all the time. I feel that travel is a religious act in the sense that we go out into the world. Whatever energy we bring into the world comes back to us hundredfold. If we go out with a sense of wonder, respect, appreciation, and openness, that all comes back to us. If we travel that way, we really make the world a better place. We become better human beings, but the people we encounter become better human beings, too. They become enriched. So, I think that I view travel as a really sacred act for me.

Mary:

Right.

Don:

Places are sacred, and the Galapagos are certainly sacred. But many of the places I've been in my life, I think of as sacred places. And we're just kind of pilgrims on this journey where we're going to figure out what's wonderful, what's sacred, what's special about this place, how can I bring that into myself so that I become a better person, and how can I also share that with other people? And that's why I love being a travel writer. I can share these special experiences with other people and maybe make them feel a little bit of that sanctity and that sacredness, too. I think that travel writing makes the world a better place on all kinds of levels. And travel, for me, is ultimately the way that we evolve.

The Galapagos is all about evolution. I think that our whole planet is about evolution, and travel helps us evolve to be better human beings and to create understanding and connection around the world so that we won't have wars and we won't have the kinds of inequities that we have now. I think that travel is a really hopeful, optimistic ground-laying enterprise. And I think if we're going to have peace in the world, the more we get to know each other and realize we're all human beings, we're all in this together, the better we'll be.

Mary:

Well, the way you describe and make the translation between travel and a religious act, I mean, I'm sold. It sounds amazing. To your point, you want to spread that word through your writing. I can see why you were really interested in travel writing. Travel probably started to inform your love of writing about it.

Don:

Absolutely. I fell in love with Paris a long time ago, and I thought I was going to be a tweedy professor of literature. And when I lived in Paris for a year out of college, I realized I wanted to be a student in the classroom of the world. So, that's what I decided to do.

Mary:

And you certainly have done that. 90 countries?

Don:

90 countries, yeah.

Mary:

Wow, and I believe that every time we travel, we take something with us from the places we visit. It sounds like you're leaving a little bit of yourself when you go, but what was the biggest takeaway from your latest trip to the Galapagos?

Don:

It was that the sanctity of the islands is still very much there. And despite everything that’s happened in our world in the last 20 years, this special character of the Galapagos is there. It's a place that we really need to recognize as precious, special, and irreplaceable, and we need to take really good care of it. I came away more energized than ever with that sense that we are the stewards of our planet. We're the people who ensure that the planet exists for our generations to come, for my daughter and my daughter's daughter, who will maybe become a marine biologist too. We have a real responsibility to make sure that these places exist, thrive, and are better than ever, and that there's magic everywhere we go. There's magic everywhere, we just need to have the eyes to see it, the mind to understand it, the heart to feel it. When we bring that to the world, the world rewards us in so many ways. And the Galapagos was incredibly rewarding for me.

Mary:

That's amazing. It sounds like for you to come back 20 years later to see it undisturbed, and still just as beautiful, it's like time has stopped there and that's credit to all the naturalists and everybody who's gone into keeping it a beautiful place for all of us.

Now, you mentioned before that I should go, and I am really inspired. How important is pre-planning with a travel advisor before taking a trip like this?

Don:

It's absolutely critical. I think travel advisors have information and experience that we can profit from. A travel advisor will be able to answer all of your questions and advise you about what's the best plan for you. Especially these days when there are still difficulties with negotiations about airfares and flights being canceled. Then there are a lot of challenges with traveling right now, and a travel advisor is the perfect person to handle that. You don't really want to be dealing with that yourself at 1 a.m. in the morning. You really want your travel advisor to deal with that. So, rely on their expertise and ability to focus on your trip and give you what you want. I think the critical thing is communicating with your travel advisor about what you want. Once they have a clear idea, they'll get it for you.

Mary:

Yeah, this might be a once-in-a-lifetime trip for anybody who’s got this on the bucket list. So ensuring you plan your time and make sure that you get to experience all that you want to. Thinking about your experiences, I always ask, what's the one thing you would tell visitors to do? What must they do if they visit the Galapagos?

Don:

They must swim with the sea lions! They must also have a close encounter with a tortoise. On land, go hang out with a tortoise for a while because you'll learn a lot of good things about the world.

I have to say that 20 years ago when we went to the Galapagos, all that was on my mind was the blue-footed boobies, the iguanas, and the things that I had iconically seen photographs in National Geographic. I didn't really understand the whole underwater life, and it's a huge part of the Galapagos. So, if you go, be sure to do snorkeling and be sure to get underwater because a whole other world comes to life underwater, and it's equally a part of the wonder of the Galapagos.

Mary:

That's just incredible. Don George, thank you so much for being with us, and for your advice.

Don:

Thank you. It's really been a pleasure to speak with you. I loved doing the article, and I also want to say that the way the article was presented in the magazines is so beautiful. I'm grateful to my editor and all the people who put that together because it's a beautiful thing to have out in the world—to celebrate the Galapagos.

Mary:

It is, and your words beautifully describe it and really paint a picture for all of us besides the wonderfully presented beautiful pictures there. We so appreciate you, Don. Thank you again for being with us, and thank you to our listeners for being with us.

If you're planning a trip, be sure to connect with a AAA travel advisor, check out aaa.com/travel, or visit your local branch. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe. I'm Mary Herendeen. Thank you for traveling with AAA.