The Curse sits across from me at breakfast, a great, smug sneer spread across his c**t mouth. Slevery Stoner Face, the guide, emerges to tell us something we already know: the Angelique has gone nowhere; we are not anchored off Floreana Island as we should be.
SSF says that, while repairs take place (and he says they'll definitely be complete by nightfall) we can get head off on a day tour to Floreana instead. We look at the clock, then the itinerary. It's already 8am and we're three hours from Floreana - we were supposed to be on land an hour ago already. As a group, we reject his offer wholeheartedly.
Instead, we propose that we go to nearby Santa Fe, which, being a fucking moron, he also rejects.
But an hour later, having looked at the fucking map, he realises the sense of our proposal and agrees, before sloping off to commission a speed boat for the task.
Before long, we're racing across the waves, watching flying fish take to the sky to escape the jaws of murderous tuna below. It's a bumpy ride, but one we're happy to take, if for no other reason than to escape the sweaty, stricken bowels of the Angelique.
Again, our first activity is snorkelling. SSF says that we can swim in three directions: right for marine iguanas, straight for reef fish, and left for sharks. 90% of the group duly heads left.
Wee Mo and I chunter along, vaguely hopeful of laying eyes on the local Galapagos shark and, to our surprise, see two turtles near the ocean floor. One is clearly junior to the other, which is weird as turtles are famously abysmal parents.
We look down for a few seconds, then look up to see some of our group titting around on jagged rocks. We shake our heads – what the hell are they playing at? In truth, we don't really care, instead looking back at the two turtles for another 30 seconds or so.
When we look up again, we have been transported 200 yards around a peninsula and into open sea. The waves are high; the current powerful. The rest of our group weren't playing: they were trying to escape.
I'm sure The Curse lurks somewhere nearby in the water, I only wish he would come up for air so I could tell him how unreasonable he's being. Bad luck is one thing: but murder on the high seas? Come on Curse!
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
I make enough progress to help a couple of the Irish girls who have never been snorkelling before and who are finding the whole thing traumatic. SSF leaves me to do his fucking job for him while he tries to swim back to the boat to raise the alarm, but not before passing me his spear. (Until this point, he had been floundering around the peninsula, unsuccessfully trying to spear-fish. We later found out that, in the presence of tourists, this is completely illegal.)
I accompany the Irish to the rest of the group, which is now about eight-strong, drifting further from the shore. Rhys, one of the young Canadians, mentions that he's seen something in the water. Everyone gets a little more tense, but I know what's out there.
I swim out with the spear, to meet The Curse head-on. I struggle further out into the stoney-grey water searching for my enemy.
At first, he's nowhere to be seen and I even think about turning back. But then, at the very limit of my visibility I see the big bastard, about 2.5m long, swimming away.
I speed up and present the spear...
“Shark!” Up goes the cry! I speed up again, trying to get closer, then very nearly lose control of all bodily fluids when Wee Mo, unannounced, brushes against my leg. Somehow the boat has snuck up behind us too and retrieved the rest of the group. SSF stands on the deck asking what I can see.
I'm shouting, but can barely force the words past the adrenaline.
“Hammerheads!” He reports back to the group. One of whom, Jonas the Swede, jumps in at the news.
Soon he joins Wee Mo and I, the three of us gawping at one, two, three, then four of the weird, brilliant beasts as they venture ever nearer.
But not too near. SSF whistles and tells us to get back on board.
When we get a look from his vantage point, it seems that, for once, he's made the right call. The four sharks we saw were just a fraction of their gang, which from above looks like it has at least 20 members.
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Photo: Wee Mo |
Some time later, we're back in the water – this time in the safe seclusion of the bay – to be entertained by the miracle of sea lions swimming. On land, the fat bastards are at best cantankerous, and at worst downright aggressive. As Werner Herzog said about grizzly bears: “What haunts me, is that... I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food.”
Underwater, however, they couldn't be more different. Perhaps they're contented by the knowledge that they could quite easily kill a man down here. Not that it's easy to spot the malevolence, instead it's all dancing and flirting and glee.
It's powerful stuff, it really is, and all thoughts of The Curse drift from my mind. Most people spend the trip back grinning, trying to preview pictures and speculating how many sharks really were in the water.
When we arrive back at the Angelique, the weather has worsened as we tentatively get back on board for dinner. SSF heads off for a minute, then comes back. To my horror, I recognise the person standing next to him.
“The machine cannot be repaired,” sleavers our guide. “I am sorry.”
“The machine cannot be repaired,” sleavers our guide. “I am sorry.”
Confusion rises, anger follows. And there, in the middle of the room is a trace of triumph. Fuck you Captain Curse!
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
The following day is spent fighting agents in the Galapagos, and back in Quito and Guayaquil. Absolutely no one wants to give any kind of refund. There are threats and counters, offers and refusals. Somewhere along the line it emerges that the real cause of the boat's paralysis is so ludicrously contemptible as to be genuinely funny: on their night out, the engineer had got so superbly steaming, that he returned to the boat and duly let the generator over-heat and eat itself. On the day he was supposed to repair it (presumably with a chronic hangover) every time he removed one singed piece, he discovered something even more mangled. Thus the Angelique wheezed it's last, at least as far as we were concerned.
While money-men and agents and owners argue the toss about who was the blame and what the compensation should be, we veterans take the relative newcomers to the Charles Darwin centre for a squizz at the giant turtles, and then for a mad, near-pointless dash down to Turtle Bay, for a glimpse at the sunset.
As the sun rises on our third day at anchor, confusion is served for breakfast, with lies for lunch, but some time around mid-afternoon it becomes clear that the group will be broken up and spread between three other boats.
The Irish girls head for a first-class boat (at a higher cost) to tour the missing islands; the Swiss trio will wait for another couple of days before getting on a new boat of their own (also at higher cost); and us? Wee Mo and I are joined by our British-Indian pals Harp and Aman, Jonas the greedy Swede, and the youthful Canucks.
The Irish girls head for a first-class boat (at a higher cost) to tour the missing islands; the Swiss trio will wait for another couple of days before getting on a new boat of their own (also at higher cost); and us? Wee Mo and I are joined by our British-Indian pals Harp and Aman, Jonas the greedy Swede, and the youthful Canucks.
We are to transfer to The Amigo, a boat so bad we had been told to specifically avoid it. A sea-dog with such a scurrilous reputation that many agencies refuse to work with it at all.
But at least it doesn't cost us anything extra.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |