I’ve written about my motion sickness issues before (here, if you want to relive my love for the prescription patch). And we knew that I might be rolling the dice just a little bit going on a boat in the Galapagos with a focus on sea kayaking.
But hey, I made it through a sailing trip to the British Virgin Islands (sans prescription medicine, nonetheless), and got thru some extremely bumpy roads in Bhutan with the patch. I really thought I was home free…as long as I had the patch on.
So, off we go to the Galapagos. We learned how to tip over and right our kayaks on the first day, which I strongly feel is by far the easiest part of kayaking. Maybe that’s because I would rather be in the water than in a kayak any day of the week…
I’m doing great on the boat, and hopping in the kayaks seems like a fun way to spend our second afternoon. Except the fact that there were whitecaps. And the sea was rough enough that they were considering cancelling the kayak excursion for the afternoon. Eh, we decided to go for it, even though we were by far the most inexperienced kayakers. I mean, the panga goes with you in case you need any help, and really, what can go wrong? We fall in? See my comment above–we both were far more comfortable in the water than in the kayak anyway.
Let me cut to the chase…we didn’t fall in, we weren’t that horrible at paddling, but I was green as a sea turtle and barely made it back to the boat before the projectile vomiting set in. Fun stuff. Dear husband was both irritated with me for not paddling (hard to paddle when 100% of my attention was to trying not to throw up), and also kept telling me to turn around so he could take pictures.
Do you know how it feels to turn around in huge swells when you already feel awful? Yea. There were a lot of bad words. See? I can put on a happy face when I am anything but (this is the second day and there weren’t even large swells).
Because this decision wasn’t bad enough, I decided that I should go kayaking again the next morning. Awesome idea Heather! You are so (stupidly) optimistic.
Sure, the scenery is gorgeous. We saw quite a few turtles and rays while we were kayaking too. But the second kayak ended up much the same way as the first…on the upside, DH figured out how to balance the kayak while I threw up over one side! How’s that for teamwork? We thought it was impressive.
After kayak-fun time numero dos, I was done. I was tired of throwing up, and I was there to enjoy and explore. Not curled up on the boat deck cushions. So there came the end of my kayaking experience in the Galapagos. Fortunately, there was another person on the boat that DH had a great time double kayaking with, so he didn’t miss out on anything due to my inner-ear fails. He turned into a really great paddler by the end of the trip.
I don’t really feel like I missed much in terms of wildlife (which was my priority), but I did learn that I will not be signing up for any more kayaking trips. Ever. For what it’s worth, if you like kayaking, our trip was run by Natural Habitat and it was amazing.
