Frigatebirds, Giant Tortoises and Boobys

You'd think that after roaming around on this beautiful old planet Earth for 83 years a guy would get wise to "surprise parties." But I got caught in another one last March when my wife, Sue dragged me off to the Sunriver Nature Center on my 83rd birthday.

Our dear friends Jay and Teresa Bowerman were there, along with several others, including Kathy Pazara, who runs the Nature Center, and they were grinning like the cat who'd swallowed the canary.

In the midst of opening thoughtful gifts, like a slick pocket-knife-tool, field note-books and such, Sue - with a smile you could see a mile - handed me a large envelope on which was written, "Sorry, this is not the trip to Panama that you're wanting..." and said, "Go ahead, open it."

In the almost 40-plus years we've been living together, if there's one thing I've learned it is to follow orders, so I opened the envelope and removed a large piece of paper - and - almost fainted! It was a flyer that said, "...but it IS a trip to the Galapagos!" and at the bottom was printed, "Happy 83rd Birthday from all your friends and family!"

There it was, a dream I've had since I was 12 years old when I first heard about the "Enchanted Isles" listening to adventure tales from a wonderful old wood-carver/story-teller who lived in an tiny shack on a farm adjacent to my grandfather's place in West Haven, Connecticut.

Charles Darwin, the man who put the Galapagos Archelpalgo in the limelight as he thought about of the power of biological forces on our planet, has always been special to me - and here I was, going to see the finches and other unique organisms that sent him along the road to evolutionary thinking.

Looking at the maps - locating Ecuador, then the Galapagos - I gasped at the thousands of miles I'd need to travel to get there. I was amazed, however, to discover it was possible to hop into a Continental airliner in Redmond, Oregon, USA, make the short trip to San Francisco, change into another Continental airliner bound for Houston, Texas, make one more change and a little over sixhours later land in Quito, Ecuador, South America at 9 p.m. the same day.

Unfortunately, I do not speak Spanish, which I didn't think would be a problem for me, but when I heard Spanish-speaking people all around me in the Quito airport I knew what it was like for anyone arriving in the US that couldn't speak English, and I was worried. Then I heard, in lightly accented English, "Galapagos Travel passengers, over here!"

I looked up and there, with the warm smile I needed to see at that moment, was a young lady holding a card that had "Galapagos Travel" printed on it in large English letters.

The smile belonged to Tanya, and once the introductions were made, she took control of my life and the other 13 people with us. All I had to do was keep breathing (and at 9,000 feet above sea-level that was no easy feat) follow her orders, and without any interruptions we walked through the complicated sequences of Ecuadorian immigration.

In moments our baggage was in a small bus in which we were taken to a the classy Hotel Mercure Alameda, given the schedule for the next day, supplied with a delicious evening meal and sent off to our rooms, where our baggage was waiting for us.

But as it is with events like this, it's an open invitation for Murphy's Law to make an appearance, and it did. Scheduling for the next day's trip to the Galapagos was mixed up, but, with her characteristic aplomb, Tanya set up a trip to a Cloud Forest preserve high above the city of Quito. The trip to the preserve took us across the Equator for the first time.

More on Jim Anderson's adventures in the Galapagos in next week's edition of The Nugget.