Still no sign of the shearwaters. I suspect they’ve long since gone out into deeper waters. Still, a couple hours’ hike around Cap de l’Estérel and its crumbling WWII fortifications was a welcome change after another morning sheltering from the rain (though I did manage to pop down to the bakery before lunch to pick up some supplies).
The Sardinian warblers are proving to be just as elusive as ever, but the black restarts that live on the peninsula are charming enough in their feverish movements among the bushes in search of food.
One seabird that stays on the coast throughout the year is the Mediterranean shag (phalacrocorax aristotelisdesmarestii), a leaner, paler cousin of the bottle-green bird that we have back home. In the UK – discounting the Farne Islands – I’ve only ever seen these birds at a distance, but in the Mediterranean I’ve had quite a few close encounters.
I’ve always been really struck by how fiercely green their eyes are. So many Pacific seabirds I encountered in Peru and Chile had strikingly red eyes, which I believe is an evolutionary adaptation that helps them to see better in the murky waters of the Humboldt current. I think the vivid green eyes of cormorants and shags share a similar function, but they’re no less impressive for the colour swap.
The sentier littoral (coastal path) that rounds the cape was a lot easier to follow than the one that supposedly laps the lagoon. I imagine it’s a lot busier in the summer months, but I still ran into a few French families and joggers along the way.
The weather is proving to be quite erratic here. The forecast rarely matches the reality: today was supposed to be a washout, but the rain all came down within the space of twenty minutes this morning. With any luck, it’ll be warm enough to go for a sea swim tomorrow. It won’t be quite as warm as the Aegean back in August, but it’d be nice to get a bit of sea swimming in before we go. BB x
The sun graced us with its presence once again, so I set out early today. It usually takes me a few days to properly get my bearings, and I was eager to explore the saltmarshes between Giens and Hyères, so I grabbed my camera and a bite to eat and was out the door by half past eight. At least at this time of year, that’s not too long after sunrise.
My first hurdle was the path around the Étang des Pesquiers. The maps will tell you there’s a footpath you can follow that laps the lagoon. The maps are wrong. What might have been an access point to the inner ring is fenced off and within private property, and the other bridge – a further three kilometres to the north – allows you no closer unless you are with a guided tour, which departs once a week on Wednesdays or Thursdays. There is a wildlife trail that eventually leaves the main road, but the saltpans are almost empty from there on out. The animals aren’t dumb, and they stick to the reserve.
At least there’s plenty to see from the road, even if you can’t get all that close. It’s also quite a nice walk, when there isn’t that much traffic (for a relatively small peninsula there was a lot of movement for a Thursday morning).
I found a small mound just beyond the sluice gates and took up a stakeout to see what I could see and hear. A Chinese family of three were close behind me and spooked most of the local wildlife with their chatter, but after they had moved on the birds slowly began to reappear. I recognised a few old Mediterranean favourites from my childhood among the scrub lining the dyke: Sardinian warblers, Cetti’s warblers, firecrests and the ever-characterful zitting cisticola. It’s a little late in the year for the bouncing flight call that gave them their S-tier name, but I’m a lot better at identifying them on sight than I used to be, so I don’t need to rely on their call so much.
There are all sorts of waders to see at this time of year as the autumn migration kicks off. I counted redshanks, greenshanks, grey plovers, bar-tailed godwits, curlews and the always elegant avocet, but I’m sure I’d have found more if I’d found a path into the marshes. I even saw a young ringtail Hen Harrier quartering the edge of the saltmarsh as I arrived, though I never did track it down again. I had similar luck with the water rails that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, though I must have been close enough to stepping on one at one point.
The real draw of the Étang des Pesquiers is its wintering herd of flamingoes. I’ve seen Greater Flamingoes before and in greater numbers, too – Doñana always delivered plenty, not to mention the enormous breeding colony at Antequera’s Fuente de Piedra lagoon – but these are the fifth flamingo species I’ve seen this year alone. To see the last of the six, the Lesser Flamingo, I’d have to travel to East Africa or India. I’m not quite mad enough for that, but it’s pretty awesome to have seen nearly all of the flamingoes of the world in a single year.
The others were not yet out of bed by the time I got back around eleven, so I needn’t have hastened home. They’d already had breakfast, but I think the fresh supply of baguettes from the lakeside bakery was appreciated.
We had lunch outside with the mistral blowing. Some generous soul left a decent pair of binoculars here, so I scanned the sea for shearwaters. I didn’t find any, but I did spot a single fisherman reeling in his net just offshore.
We had a game of tennis in the afternoon – or as close to a game of tennis as one decent player and four academics could manage. It was fun, even though I’m about as good at tennis now as I was when I was fourteen – which is to say, laughably bad. I did manage to hit the ball a few times though, which is a small improvement.
The sunsets here are rather special. I think we’re due another thunderstorm. The red sky certainly seemed to imply that the rain will return, so I’m glad to have got out and done some exploring today.
I certainly wouldn’t begrudge another lightning storm. The last one was pretty spectacular.
Tomorrow, Toulon. Raffi needs to track down a luthier, first and foremost, and there’s more to see in the south of France beyond the Giens Peninsula. BB x
It’s raining outside. I turned off my alarms out of courtesy to my companions, but the dissonant blare of a flood alert woke us all up around 8am anyway. The Giens Peninsula is enveloped in a thick cover of white cloud, out of which the islands of Petit and Grand Ribeau seem to come and go. I haven’t got out to explore yet, thanks to the inclement weather. With the flood warnings threatening the thin strip of sand connecting us to the mainland, we could well be stuck here today. It feels very cut-off from the world.
Now seems as good a time as any to come clean. Five months remain until I turn my life upside down and leave the UK for good.
Over the summer, while I was working in Santiago, I was made an offer that was very hard to turn down: a permanent post as Teacher of English Literature in the school’s Senior Department (the equivalent of our Years 10-13 in the UK). That might seem like a complete u-turn on the last eight years of French and Spanish teaching experience over here, but in more ways than one, it’s the natural evolution of my career, which has already become extremely literature-heavy. This was always the plan: to teach MFL to the stage where I had mastered both French and Spanish to the point where I could capably deliver advanced literature in both, take an SEQ (Subject Enhancement Qualification) over the summer to add English to my roster, and then use all three as a sledgehammer to break into the Spanish education system. They can take away my ability to work across Europe as a citizen of the EU, but they can’t take away my will. You might call it my personal revenge against Brexit.
I hear you. Chile is a pretty big sidestep to reach that goal – over 8.000km to the side, to be precise. But let’s be realistic: just how often do opportunities like this come around? Here, at last, is a chance to bypass the additional expense of further training and (quite possibly) the need for a degree in English Literature. It’s the job I always wanted, and while it might not be in Spain, it is in a Spanish-speaking country. As the bandits of Skyrim would say, that’s close enough.
It’s not just the job. It’s the lifestyle. I’ve been living and working within the British boarding school system for the last eight years. I ran the calculations through AI this morning and was genuinely alarmed by just how much of my time I’ve given away over the years. Factoring in Wednesday and Friday nights, Saturday mornings and occasional Sunday duties, I’ve lost well over a year of my life to the boarding school world. That’s pretty humbling – and it might go some way to explaining how so many of my friends appear to have found the time to meet their partners, tie the knot and settle down already.
It’s not just the amount of time but the quality of it. I’m not working every hour I’m on call, but I can’t do anything or go anywhere. Little things like house assemblies and tutor time mean I can’t disappear on a Friday night, even if I have no lessons to teach on Saturday morning. Spontaneity – the freedom to improvise that I hold in dangerously high regard – is hard to exercise in such a world.
Moving to Chile means leaving that world behind. It means finding a place of my own to live, where I can live by my own rules. It means commuting to work (which, I’ll be honest, I have missed). It means losing an immediate community – and the additional incentive to go out there and find my own. It will be a more costly existence than the one I have known for the last eight years, but that is what the last eight years have been for: to make this change all the easier.
I will have to leave everything behind. I have five months to get rid of all the furniture I have acquired over the last ten years or so, as I can’t take any of it with me. I won’t be sad to see the back of it. I won’t be parted from my books, so I’ll have to find them a home until I know whether this move is for life. This is all a lot easier said than done, of course, but I can’t help feeling I’ll be a lot happier starting from scratch. As long as I have my journal, my camera and my health, I’ll be OK.
It goes without saying that my wildlife bonanza over the summer has played an enormous part in swaying my decision. The fact that I might be able to see condors from my office every week is surreal. The whole of South America will on my doorstep. Peru’s keys to the Amazon. Brazil’s Pantanal. Argentina’s great whale migration. Chile’s magnificent pumas. All of the little things: hummingbirds, mockingbirds, meadowlarks and caracaras. Having pelicans, albatrosses and enormous sea lions within a couple of hours’ reach at weekends. The summer just gone was without a doubt the happiest of my life, and I would dearly like to be that happy forever.
It’s no guarantee that She will be in Chile, but with such an incredible wealth of wildlife to see every day of the year, I don’t think I’ll have all that much time to contemplate. I’ll be much too busy seeking out pudus, kodkods and tucúqueres to care all that much. If I find Her along the way, I’ll consider it a bonus. All the same, it can’t hurt my chances: Santiago’s population of seven million is sure to be a better place to start than Taunton’s sixty-one thousand.
It will be quite easily the most dramatic move of my life so far. I’ve lived in a number of places – Uganda, Morocco, Jordan and Spain, of course – but most of them were very much intended to be temporary. This could be it. I will certainly treat it as such until I know otherwise.
I’m not relishing breaking the news to my students, but I’ll have to do so sooner or later. My job ad went up today, and with the interviews due to start shortly after we return, it will only be a matter of time until they put two and two together. That’s partly what this is all about – reasoning it out to myself before I have to spell it out to them. Knowing what to say. Hopefully they’ll understand.
The New World is calling. Like so many before me, I must leave my life behind and seek my destiny across the sea. Knowing what you know, having read what you have read, can you blame me? BB x
I left the UK for Chile at the end of the first week of July, just as the heat wave was ramping up and the first fires were breaking out. When my plane touched down at Gatwick yesterday, it was through the first rain clouds the country had seen since June. Like the first snows of Patagonia, I arrived just in time to catch the changing of the seasons.
What a change it’s been here, though. I’ve never seen England so dry. Dying trees. Trickling streams. Empty ponds. Parks and gardens a shade of yellow that would be more at home in a Van Gogh painting. Chile gets ravaged by the heat in summer as well, but at least they are ready for it when it comes. We even closed the schools back in June, it got so bad – and that takes some doing. We don’t even close for snow these days.
I dread to think of the impact this terrible drought will have had on the wildlife of these British islands – though I know it’s a pretty established truth that life always finds a way.
Like this little vole, snacking on some birdseed. I never did find its larger Chilean cousins, the vizcacha and the chinchilla, though I’m fairly certain I did see one of the rare rice rats during my trip to the Galápagos last week. I’ll have to try again someday – if I can ever take my eyes off those endless South American skies.
No condors here, sadly, but the local population of buzzards and red kites are a perfectly adequate substitute. I only saw the kites a couple of times today, but the buzzard was around a fair bit. Maybe he was looking for the vole? I can’t imagine it would be anything more than a snack for something as big as a buzzard, although at this time of year the hunter may have chicks to feed somewhere in the forest.
Tomorrow – Athens! The last mad adventure of the summer. My wedding suit is packed and I’m traveling ever so light, since I’ve decided to leave the camera behind this time and go all in on the personal side of the city. After all, I’m going out there to see an old friend tie the knot, not as a tourist. From what I’ve heard of Greek weddings, I’d be mightily surprised if I have the energy to do anything the day after, let alone during the early hours of the morning.
Aeropuerto Internacional Arturo Merino Benítez, Santiago de Chile. 18.40.
Farewells made. Suitcase packed. Rucksack slimmed down to my journal, my camera and a couple of charging devices. Now I’m just waiting in the long line to check in my hold luggage and then – after the inevitable hurdle over my exhaustive middle names – we’re good to go.
With such a late departure, I had time to say a few last goodbyes, so I accompanied Tomás to school for the last time on this trip and sought out Byron, the man behind this whole Chilean exchange idea. I’d managed to miss him on my last day, and I wasn’t about to leave the country without saying thank you to the man who made it all possible.
With that and a few other farewells taken care of, I was done by eleven, so rather than hanging around all day I decided to walk back to Las Condes. The sun was shining, I had my camera on me (just in case) and I thought I’d try to snap some of the birds I’ve seen every day at work but never managed to get on film. I’m pretty sure I want to come back and see Chile again someday, so it’s not the end of the world if I leave a few unfinished tasks, but I did want to seize the chance while the sun was shining. It’s been a rare sight during my stay!
First up: the diuca! This charming slate-grey Chilean chaffinch substitute has been an ever-present companion at work but hard to find beyond the hills around Craighouse, so I’m really happy I managed to find one on the walk down from the school! It’s been bugging me that they’ve been at an arm’s length all the time at school but never when I had my camera on me.
Also: the austral blackbird! No relation to the blackbirds of English parks and gardens, this tremendously noisy South American specialty has been, together with the austral thrush and the meadowlark, part of the soundscape of my morning commute to work.
I saw a few lapwings on the way through the fancier suburbs of Lo Barnechea, but too high up or too far to bother taking the lens out. They still remind me of enormous bats with their bouncy flight, but just like their cousins in England, they’re utterly fearless and will attack anything they perceive as a threat. I’ve even seen them take on buzzard-eagles, which are the second largest creatures of the Andean sky after the condor.
Of course, I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to the mockingbirds. I’ve become especially fond of these extremely characterful creatures, who have been with me from Patagonia to Santiago and even as far as the Galápagos. If I had a house with a garden here in Santiago, I swear I’d try to tame one – and I don’t think it would take an awful lot of effort, either.
Equally, I wouldn’t dream of leaving Chile without saying goodbye to the Lord of the Andes. Fortunately, I didn’t have to. I took a short walk up the slope of Manquehue to see how far I could go, and as I neared the limit (there’s a fence cutting off the road), three condors came soaring into view over its summit. At times they were so close I could see the royal white flush on the upper parts of their mighty wings.
I didn’t take too many photos. I was just happy to watch them for a while.
I have to admit – and this will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following my adventures – this has been the happiest summer of my life. I can’t remember a time when I’ve felt so alive. That’s especially noteworthy because the seemingly endless summer holiday is usually one of the lowest points of the year for me, made tolerable only by dedicating as much of it as I can afford to walking the Camino de Santiago. For those outside the teaching profession, it might seem incredibly ungrateful to bemoan the concept of a nine-week holiday, but for me, it has always gone on far too long.
This summer has been different. Every day has been full of light and wonder, even when it kicked up a blizzard or sent down a thunderstorm. Many years of hard work and boarding school-induced savings have finally given me the chance to do what I could only dream of as a child: to see so much of South America and its incredible wildlife. Sometimes I think I have been mad to shut myself away in a seven-days-a-week job for almost all of my twenties, but if this is what it was building towards… it was worth every lost weekend. Every single one.
On my way back down from Manquehue I saw something coming up the road towards me that I had not expected to see at all: a culpeo. This South American relative of the coyote is only a little larger than a fox, but has something more of the wolf in its face than the bin-raiding reds of London.
And it was trotting up the pavement right towards me, in broad daylight, in a perfectly twee corner of suburban Santiago, without a care in the world.
After a whole week in the Galápagos, where mammals larger than rats are nonexistent, I wasn’t expecting my final South American animal encounter to be anything but the feathered kind. I certainly wasn’t expecting a miniature coyote.
I’ve been bewitched by wolves since my adventures in the frozen forest of Białowieza National Park in Poland two years ago. I’ve still got my eye on another wolf-tracking expedition – this time in Italy – but to see one of their relatives so incredibly close is just one more reminder of how spectacular even the everyday encounters with wildlife in this country can be.
Dammit, not just this country. This whole damn continent.
Traditionally, crossing paths with a fox was considered a bad omen in the Andes. But I don’t see it that way. I’m more inclined to agree with the Japanese, who once revered foxes as auspicious spirits and messengers of the fertility god Inari. In short, like a black cat, they can either be portents of good or ill luck, depending on your point of view.
Fur of gold and silver, eyes of honey brown and feet as silent as the night. How could such a spirit possibly be anything but a good omen?
I had 11.000 Chilean pesos in cash left over in my wallet, so I bought myself a fried chicken sandwich and a pain au chocolat to keep the wolf from the door. After all, in all of my minesweeping adventures around Manquehue today, I completely forgot to have lunch.
The way I see it, a man like me could fall in love with a country like this every single day and lose nothing in the repeated magic of that first infatuation.
I am decided. I have got to come back. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but I will make it happen. I may need to save up again after the fauna fantasia of this summer, but when it comes around, I want to embrace it all over again.
Happiness like I haven’t known in years. More wildlife than I know what to do with. Mountains that make my heart soar. Condors that make my heart race. And speaking Spanish every day, which keeps my heart beating. Chile has done a number on me and I’m all for it. Honestly – can you blame me? BB x
What an incredible week it’s been! But like all good things, it’s finally come to an end. I’ve made it back to Baltra, not too far from where I was yesterday, and I have a good few hours until my flight departs – the last one of the day. I could have dawdled in Puerto Ayora, but if there’s one thing solo travel has taught me, it’s not to chance the final day, especially when you’re navigating to a place you haven’t been.
Getting to the airport was a cinch. The flat rate for a taxi to the Itabaca Channel is $30, which is per cab, not per head, but as I’m traveling solo, there wasn’t much of a chance of splitting it – and it’s not too much of a price to pay in any event. After that, a single dollar pays your fare across the channel (just get in line under the shelter) and then it’s another $5 for the bus to the airport (which seems non-negotiable – I don’t think you’re allowed to walk it).
All-in, the journey takes about an hour. It’s a pretty small airport, but there are a few shops where you can buy last-minute souvenirs, some snacks for the journey, or grab some final photos of the finches and reptiles that live around the airport. There’s at least one land iguana prowling around that you might see if you’re lucky.
While I’m waiting, I thought I’d run down my ranking for the things I’ve done on this trip, in case you ever consider the same:
✩✩✩✩✩ Punta Pitt ($240)
Easily the best trip on this tour and a very good substitute for Española’s Punta Suarez. Incredible views of all three species of booby, shearwaters, petrels and storm-petrels galore and a superb guide in Samuel Quiroz.
✩✩✩✩ Puerto Baquerizo Moreno (Free)
San Cristobal’s only town is genuinely one of the best places for close encounters with animals of all kinds. Mockingbirds, sea lions, finches, lava herons, noddies, pelicans, iguanas and crabs abound, and I’ve seen both turtles and sharks without even having to leave town. I can’t think of anywhere quite like it.
✩✩✩ North Seymour ($260)
The best destination for observing frigatebirds and land iguanas in the Galapagos for sure. They also chuck in a visit to Playa Las Bachas for flamingoes, turtles and ghost crabs. The only reason it’s not higher on my list was because of the timing. It would probably be near the top spot if we hadn’t gone in the middle of the day.
✩✩ Galapagos Frontier ($35)
A superb spot for seeing the famous giant tortoises, so close to Puerto Ayora that you could get there on foot if you wanted to. The $35 tour doesn’t include the taxi fare there and back ($25) which is worth considering, and holds this back a spot or two.
✩ Kicker Rock ($150)
One of the best diving spots in the world – but perhaps not as legendary for snorkeling. $150 seems a bit steep to see a few fish that you could find just as easily by snorkelling off Cerro Tijeretas, but there are tropicbirds to be seen here, and the turtles at Playa Manglecito more than made up for the snorkeling at the rock itself.
Pouring one out for the trip that never was: Punta Suarez on Isla Española. I’d have sacrificed both Punta Pitt and North Seymour to make that trip happen, but thanks to a malfunction with my tour operator’s onboard motor, it was not to be. At least I got my refund. When I think about it, $260 is a bit steep to see an albatross I’ve already seen, a third species of mockingbird and a shiny version of the marine iguanas – but then, none of the tours on the Galapagos are cheap. It’s set up to be a once-in-a-lifetime sort of destination, so people come here with cash to burn.
I’ll have to find some other way and some other place to see nesting albatrosses. This can’t be the only place in the world. I’m sure we’ll meet again somewhere, someday.
Readjusting to life at home is going to take some time after all of this. It’s been one wildlife spectacular after another this year in an almost unbroken line since my spontaneous trip to Peru in March. It’s been incredible falling back in love with the wild again. I don’t feel so lonely anymore and my general sense of happiness has gone through the roof. How can you be anything but happy when you’re surrounded by nature? I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the perfect antidote to the political and technological nightmare within which we find ourselves these days.
Whatever the problem, you will always find the answer in nature. I firmly believe that.
In total, I’ve spent just shy of $700 on trips and tours. That’s significantly less than I expected, and ridiculously cheaper than taking the liveaboard cruise option which starts at around $3.000. Traveling the Galapagos by yourself absolutely can be done, but if you’re giving it some thought, here’s my advice:
Do inquire about timings of trips and tours if you can, as these do somewhat dictate the success of your tours. Morning hikes are better than afternoon hikes.
Keep an eye out for guides with a III insignia under their badges on their left sleeves – these are park scientists and will be genuine fountains of information.
Be patient with the weather in August. The garúa rain can be disheartening in the morning, but it invariably clears by midday.
Always carry single dollars in paper or coin – you’ll need these more than you think for ferries, launches and helping restaurant staff to break down larger bills.
Don’t trust the prices on the packaging in the mini markets – stuff invariably costs more than what it says because of the cost of importing goods onto the islands.
Share and share alike! Not everybody brings a camera to the islands, so offer to share any photos you take with people on your trip so they can take away some magical memories! I’ve been asked at least three times so there’s clearly a demand for it.
You really don’t need to speak Spanish here as these islands live off the tourist trade, but if you can, please do – it goes such a long way with the locals.
Not too much longer to wait now. I might go and find something to eat. It’s going to be a long and probably rather sleepless night! BB x
