the galapagos safari camp .... joy, joy, joy.....

from the lava tunnel, jaime drove my family and dora the explorer to the safari camp ...
it was maybe a ten or fifteen minute drive ... and we got to a giant (open) gate ... with a sign that said galapagos safari camp ... rah! we are here ...

and then we drove up the driveway ... and we drove and drove and drove and drove ... and we would spend the rest of the week driving that safari camp driveway and marveling that it must surely be the longest driveway in the universe .... are driveways by definition paved? this one wasn't .. it was a one lane red brown path .... gravely, muddy, swarming with birds (darwin finches!!hooray!), thick with grasses and bushes and trees right up to the pathway/driveway .....

so we drove up that path for, i think, not quite ten minutes ... and we pulled up to an unassuming building ... that turned out to be one of the most gorgeous spots EVER ... really ... ever ....

in my travel journal i wrote "YES, i picked the right place!" ... you know how you never really know til you know? finally i knew that this was all going to work out the way i wanted it to! ... such relief! yes!

up the stairs, and in through a giant reclaimed (i think) door ... and the far wall was glass ... and you peered through the hotel lobby out over half of santa cruz ... the uninhabited half ... the woods, jungle, rain forest, misty, cloudy side that looked out into the pacific ocean and out to the islands daphne major and daphne minor (my favorite islands that i'll never go to ... that can be another blog post ....) ....

we were given a welcome drink ... sophie's here above is pink and fizzy ...

 

so, a charming catherine welcomed us, talked to us about dinner and plans and what's what ... she walked us to our tents and taught us the tricks of the tent ... like, there are light switches at the bottom of the steps so you can turn on lights before you venture in ... and turn them off after you leave ...

 so our tents were up on a platform ..... it appeared to be like a real tent ... like the one in my basement ... a screen layer, a canvas layer, a rain fly .... A frame ... but big ... well ... bigger than the one in my basement .... which sells as a sleeps four, but in my world, sleeps a crowded family of five ... although, we've not camped in that tent since drew got mansized ... i think we've outgrown our tent!

so anyway ... we had a large gorgeous tent with a front porch and a hammock ....

and with a king size bed ... and a desk ..... and the backside of the headboard was cupboards for our things ... and beyond that was another zip door for the bathroom .... the tents have full sized bathrooms .... sweet ... look at the bedroom slippers right there at the foot of the bed waiting for you ! ... um, you being me, unless i've talked you into a trip ...

and just in case you're worried about me being in this tent and my kids in some far away spot (sophie was worried), their tent was next door ...

...maybe 30 feet away .... here's a pic from my hammock to her hammock ... that's sophie reading (harry potter) .... we settled in quickly and happily .... we were tired from all that travel and instant sight seeing .... site seeing ... so it was nice to relax ... dinner was at 6.30 ... we had to chill ....

 that's a picture of our groovy sink .... in our tent bathroom .... it's looking a bit cluttered, so this pic is probably not actually from the first afternoon (blogger confession, out of order travel pics ).... our lodgings were green ... eco tourism is the buzzword .... in practical terms it means that in some place like the galapagos, fresh water is a scarce commodity ... clean fresh water ever more scarce .... the safari camp catches rain water and then (darn, i forgot the right word) and then they distill it, boil it, cure it, fix it up all nice and clean for guests .... (what's that word?) ... so in the left you see a white lidded pitcher .. that's rain water that's been _______ (darn) ... cleaned up for us .... there's also bottled water if you want ... no drinking the tap water ... brush your teeth with a cup or water next to you ....

 that's the shower ... hot and cold ....there were little galapagos shampoos in case yours exploded in your baggie on the airplane ....

so on that first day ...
-i learned you have to zip the screen to keep bugs out ....

-when they give you a flashlight after dinner, you're going to need it to get back to your tent ... what number tent were we?

-dinner was a pumpkin soup starter, pesto steak, potatoes and veggies .. and a dessert that i did not write down in my journal and now that information is gone ... gone forever ... i can promise it was awesome though ....

-catherine checked to make sure we had motion sickness pills for our boat ride tomorrow .. um... no ... so she gave us some just in case ....

-sunday was over and it felt like we'd been away from home for a week ... and i had been just barely over 24 hours ..... yikes!!


sophie wanted to add to the post:

<<this is sophie... again... the safari camp had a very long red mud road with grass ...my mom probably gave you that... there were about 12 tents that you cant call tents because they were complete with lights, furniture,hot water,a shower, a sink, that we were only allowed to wash our hands with, not drink, a hammock... should i go on??? then the tent that my brother, sister, and i were in was called T5 my mom and dad were in T4 ...we were always alone at the hotel so we could shout to each other... >>

and i would like to offer a rebuttal ... we didn't shout ... but, for most of our trip , the other tents were not being lived in, so we would call to each other tent to tent, rather than walk all the way over to chat ...

tomorrow's blog post? a few bumps ... large bumps ... in the metaphorical, existential, proverbial, and actual road ...