Cerro Dragon & Sombrero Chino
In the evening of May 23 1997, I took a Zodiac from Puerto Ayora to come on board. The day after, now ten years ago, we were going to receive our first guests ever starting a voyage in the Galápagos on the Polaris. I was surprised by the color of the hull, different from the all-white of most boats operating in Galápagos at the time. It was blue, and I loved the whale tail and the eye logo painted on the funnel, it made me dream about the far away places the Polaris was coming from. I was going to be one of the naturalists, together with Gilda Gonzalez, Emma Ridley, Pierre Thomas and Rafael Pesantes. Of the five guides on that first week, four of us are still here. Pierre went back to his birth country, Belgium. Not only the naturalists (we have to add Cindy Manning and Lynn Fowler) have stayed, but many of the crew as well: Jorge Quimis, Eduardo Mindiolaza, Mario Pachay, Eloy Leon, Mercy Quinonez, Pedro Gomez, Cesareo Hernandez, Joel Valarezo, Luis Columba, Orlando Perez, Segundo Moyon, Carlos Melendrez, and also Henry Abad and Neri Calderon, now working on our sister ship, the Islander. We have been on board since the very beginning, faithful to a good ship that has seen our laughs and our tears.
We had all been in the islands before, but on board Polaris we saw them through different eyes. This was the first ship in Galápagos with a glass-bottom boat and a floating spa, also the first that started with recap traditions and rotating the naturalists.
I can’t believe it is ten years! 3650 days of my life and the lives of many who have practically lived on board Polaris for most of the last 120 months. This ship had seen the world before coming to the Enchanted Islands; it had been in Arctic waters, crossing the Atlantic, and through the Panama Canal more than a hundred times. The bridge keeps markers for every Polar bear watched around Svalbard, and the corridors and walls show souvenirs and certificates of harbours where Polaris docked since it was bought by Sven Lindblad in 1987.
If these walls could talk, what would they say? What have they seen inside and outside? How many people would call Polaris home? What kinds of stories, sad and happy, amorous and unromantic? How many spouses-to-be met in here for the first time, and how many declared their love for each other inside these walls? How many of those relationships endured through time while on board, and how many just vanished, also on board? How many whales have the hull of the ship heard along the years? If a level of excitement could be measured…what's the most excitement the Polaris has had at one single nature sighting, and which one? There is a lot to commemorate, and we celebrated kayaking among penguins, with a birthday cake and a Polaris piñata.
I wish my memory had the capacity to recall every detail of the last ten years. My memory doesn’t but my heart does.
In the evening of May 23 1997, I took a Zodiac from Puerto Ayora to come on board. The day after, now ten years ago, we were going to receive our first guests ever starting a voyage in the Galápagos on the Polaris. I was surprised by the color of the hull, different from the all-white of most boats operating in Galápagos at the time. It was blue, and I loved the whale tail and the eye logo painted on the funnel, it made me dream about the far away places the Polaris was coming from. I was going to be one of the naturalists, together with Gilda Gonzalez, Emma Ridley, Pierre Thomas and Rafael Pesantes. Of the five guides on that first week, four of us are still here. Pierre went back to his birth country, Belgium. Not only the naturalists (we have to add Cindy Manning and Lynn Fowler) have stayed, but many of the crew as well: Jorge Quimis, Eduardo Mindiolaza, Mario Pachay, Eloy Leon, Mercy Quinonez, Pedro Gomez, Cesareo Hernandez, Joel Valarezo, Luis Columba, Orlando Perez, Segundo Moyon, Carlos Melendrez, and also Henry Abad and Neri Calderon, now working on our sister ship, the Islander. We have been on board since the very beginning, faithful to a good ship that has seen our laughs and our tears.
We had all been in the islands before, but on board Polaris we saw them through different eyes. This was the first ship in Galápagos with a glass-bottom boat and a floating spa, also the first that started with recap traditions and rotating the naturalists.
I can’t believe it is ten years! 3650 days of my life and the lives of many who have practically lived on board Polaris for most of the last 120 months. This ship had seen the world before coming to the Enchanted Islands; it had been in Arctic waters, crossing the Atlantic, and through the Panama Canal more than a hundred times. The bridge keeps markers for every Polar bear watched around Svalbard, and the corridors and walls show souvenirs and certificates of harbours where Polaris docked since it was bought by Sven Lindblad in 1987.
If these walls could talk, what would they say? What have they seen inside and outside? How many people would call Polaris home? What kinds of stories, sad and happy, amorous and unromantic? How many spouses-to-be met in here for the first time, and how many declared their love for each other inside these walls? How many of those relationships endured through time while on board, and how many just vanished, also on board? How many whales have the hull of the ship heard along the years? If a level of excitement could be measured…what's the most excitement the Polaris has had at one single nature sighting, and which one? There is a lot to commemorate, and we celebrated kayaking among penguins, with a birthday cake and a Polaris piñata.
I wish my memory had the capacity to recall every detail of the last ten years. My memory doesn’t but my heart does.
