Sailing between two archipelagos. My journey.
There are 3200 nautical miles of navigation between Baltra and Nuko Hiva.
"Thousands and thousands of waves rising and falling against the starboard and port side of the sailboat, while its bow heads toward its destination, the wind never stopping its kisses on your face" [from my notes ...].
Six hours a day filled with bridge watch; engine room checks as well as kitchen clean up after lunches. Millions of stars painting my nights between Galapagos and Polynesia, brought wistful memories of my childhood lying on the sand with my brothers around a campfire; listening to my mother’s stories while watching the heavens.
My journey unites the young Galapagos Islands formed from ocean floor eruptions barely 4 to 5 million years old with Polynesia; existing for more than 175 million of years. Neither having even been part of a continent they existed detached as the continental masses continued to split and scatter across the Pacific.
“It is already Friday, feeling how the ship moves as it sails, understanding that the creaking sounds echoing inside are a reminder of a vessel designed to withstand the blow and force of the waves in the midst of immensity of the ocean. You still feel vulnerable, since your life depends not only on you, but on the experience of this crew, the capacity of those who built this ship and the wisdom transmitted by centuries of those universal laws of navigation " [ from my notes ...].
Polynesia has around 3,500 years of human history; starting with ocean borne migrations from Southeast Asia arriving first in Samoa and Tonga, and from there they continued by sea in extraordinary rafts to the Cook, Tahiti, Tuamotu, Marquesas islands. Over time they joined with Hawaii to the north, New Zealand to the west, and Rapa Nui to the east to form an immense triangle in the Pacific united by a single culture, the Polynesians.
Galapagos, on the other hand, has a human history dating back only around 200 years, with sporadic inhabitants without an ancestral culture of their own creating a migratory mixture that is inseparable from the place of which I am part. Regardless of where on the planet we live those of us who all an island home shares an inalienable condition. We are "Islanders."
This human ancestral history of the Polynesians is what made UNESCO declare an ancient sacred site where traditional ceremonies were performed on Raiatea Island, as the "Tapulapuatea" Cultural Heritage of Humanity,
Galapagos however was recognized as a World Heritage Site by the same world organization as being of outstanding universal value for the “natural beauty of the islands, the diversity and uniqueness of species, endemism", and for its volcanic origin; considered a living laboratory of evolutionary processes still underway.
But the ocean and the island unite us.
Stories of navigations, discoveries, conquests, piracy, whaling, research; fascinating voyages across five centuries. We are oceanic islands. Our human condition also unites us, in that even with these ancestral, cultural differences and varied interests and priorities, we always live by and have that feeling of being surrounded by the sea.
“On that afternoon in Baltra, Yvonne said goodbye to me on the dock. Nostalgia, but with a thirst for travel. We headed to the east of Santa Cruz to a side of this island that I had not seen before! El Edén, Guy Fawkes, Pinzón, … The frigates practically flying beside us. From there the captain on a heading of 230 looks for the south, towards those currents and winds that will take us on those special routes that only sailors know to take us west, there, to the southern seas” [from my notes…].
Thirteen days of sea and sky, of sunsets and sunrises where each sunrise and sunset were a charge of life to the senses. To have given at least one star to each of my loved ones. To watch Venus, mark its course every night, indicating to us - hey! I am the star! Hundreds of pages read; my mind caressed with thousands of thoughts. Two fish caught made for a delicious dinner. A lone dolphin for a day winked at us. Yes, thirteen days that marked my mind and my soul. That Sunday at dawn when I got up to take watch, Juliet had already anchored. I hurried up the stairs and saw some imposing green mountains embroidered with clouds that surrounded the bay. There nestled in the flank of the mountain next to the sea is a town like something out of a picture book. On the shore young men and women with tattoos all over their bodies, and with skin complexion like mine are leading their horses out deeper to bathe them, playing with each other. We had arrived at Nuko Hiva; stopped in time waiting for me. I remember that when I disembarked and while I was arriving at its dock, I felt like an explorer ... a discoverer, a mixture of feelings of arriving at that very place, where for the last 20 years I had prepared departure documents for hundreds of yachts and sailboats to continue their travels. In each of those official papers, there was a little piece of a dream of mine.
Those of us who live on islands in different parts of the world are united. We're different. There are island countries, others not. Simple communities, or special regimes; But this fact of living on islands must already break that idea of limitations. Our mind must be universal. Lacking much of what current consumerism offers us most strongly is our privilege, it must be our advantage. Give value to what is important. To take care of our environment, our ocean, our people; and where the concept or the discourse takes a back seat: We are what we do!
I end the story of my journey between these two places so different, yet so similar, with these lines that capture how I feel every time I leave, and every time I return to this Archipelago, our Islands ...
“For those who come to it, every island is an apparition, expected and yet sudden, like a birth. Indeed, before being able to set foot on an island one must cross the sea or the sky and it is there, during that journey between one land and another, that the traveler feels what is meant by island: isolation” [Christopher Greiner].
Ricardo Arenas P.
Santa Cruz, June 7th 2021 (…from my journey, July 2018
