Santa Cruz Island
We have breakfast while anchored in Academy Bay, in front of Puerto Ayora, enjoying the “Garua” season. Garua is a sweet word, it sounds like the perfect name for a child or a book. It is the term used for a season as charming as the word itself. Garua is the drizzle falling on the Galapagos Archipelago in the dry season. It seems contradictory, but that is the way things happen in this magical place. In Galapagos, there is a soft mist when it is dry, and sunny hot days when it is rainy. And the tortoises, mockingbirds and sea lions enjoy it all the same. Garua brings some melancholy to my spirit. This is the time when so many events happen, when the boobies are nesting on Espanola, and whales are not a rare sighting. There are those cormorants with hatchlings on Fernandina, and brown noddy tern babies on Isabela. The islands are splendid, producing more life, richer in animal existence than ever, and we have to leave…that brings garua to my heart.
Polaris goes to dry dock so we won’t be around for the coming four weeks. What is going to happen with my new friends growing up on the islands? How will they be when we come back? It will all be a great surprise, and more beauty will arise on our re-encounter with the “garua” loveliness in four more weeks.
We have breakfast while anchored in Academy Bay, in front of Puerto Ayora, enjoying the “Garua” season. Garua is a sweet word, it sounds like the perfect name for a child or a book. It is the term used for a season as charming as the word itself. Garua is the drizzle falling on the Galapagos Archipelago in the dry season. It seems contradictory, but that is the way things happen in this magical place. In Galapagos, there is a soft mist when it is dry, and sunny hot days when it is rainy. And the tortoises, mockingbirds and sea lions enjoy it all the same. Garua brings some melancholy to my spirit. This is the time when so many events happen, when the boobies are nesting on Espanola, and whales are not a rare sighting. There are those cormorants with hatchlings on Fernandina, and brown noddy tern babies on Isabela. The islands are splendid, producing more life, richer in animal existence than ever, and we have to leave…that brings garua to my heart.
Polaris goes to dry dock so we won’t be around for the coming four weeks. What is going to happen with my new friends growing up on the islands? How will they be when we come back? It will all be a great surprise, and more beauty will arise on our re-encounter with the “garua” loveliness in four more weeks.
