After a few hours of reconnoitering the dusty streets of Puerto Ayora, I found a fisherman who would take two off-duty scientific researchers and me on a tour of the Galápagos Islands if we paid for his beer and gas. We handed him a wad of crumpled bank notes, threw our rucksacks onto his smelly rust bucket of a boat, and headed out to sea. I was feeling quite proud of myself for activating a plan of exploration so expediently, having only just arrived on the island of Santa Cruz that morning.

Chug, cough, sputter. Chug, cough, sputter. The boat determinedly plowed through the watery troughs in spite of its congested rhythm, diesel fumes in our wake. Bound for islands unknown, I had a smile on my face, until I noticed we were headed straight for a gargantuan rock. The captain was nowhere in sight. Alarmed, I tripped down the steps leading to the dark, dank hold to find him passed out on a mattress, his rumbling snores reverberating throughout the cabin. I shook him until his bloodshot eyes creaked open. He stared at me crossed-eyed, then belched in my face. Judging by the plethora of empty cans strewn around him, he had stealthily managed to consume an entire case of beer in less than thirty minutes. Luckily, one of the scientists knew how to take control of the boat. Disappointed, we turned the hulk around and headed back to port without hitting anything along the way. This was my first mutiny.

Short of cash and bankrupt of a game plan, I abandoned the alcoholic captain and my fellow mutineers. At least no one had died. I couldn’t say the same thing about the train trip I had taken two weeks earlier. I was riding on the roof (standard seating on overcrowded trains in South America) of the 1800s narrow-gauge steam locomotive that connected Quito, the mountainous Andean capitol of Ecuador, with the port town of Quayaquil via the dramatic Avenue of the Volcanoes. I always chose the roof to avoid the crowded, stinky conditions inside and get a spectacular view with thrills provided around every leaning turn. The train shunted back and forth along the steep, rocky promontory appropriately named Nariz del Diablo (the Devil’s Nose), and suddenly came to a grinding halt. An Otavalan Indian had tumbled off on one of the curves. There he lay on the tracks—at least part of him. His head had rolled into the weeds a few feet away.

Feeling depressed and exhausted over my grim and graphic train odyssey, too many sweaty nights in sleazy bordellos waiting for transport, and the failed launch with the drunken fisherman into the wondrous world of rare endemic creatures, I craved chocolate.

The only store in tiny Puerto Ayora was a dimly-lit shack stocked with cerveza, cigarillos, and Manichos. Standing in line, the Manicho candy bar already unwrapped and melting in my mouth, I looked over the shoulder of the imposing shirtless man in front of me who was taking way too much time. He was writing a check. A check! There were no banks in the Galápagos. His robust curlicue signature spelled out Freddy Schmidt.

I’d read about the legendary Schmidts in a book lent to me by my scientist seatmates in the drafty military supply plane flying from Guayaquil to the Galápagos. Being young, blond, persistent, and female are great qualities to possess if you need a ride somewhere. Just as I had been about to give up completely on finding a way to cross the five hundred miles of Pacific Ocean that separated the Galápagos from mainland Ecuador, a pilot offered me a lift in the camouflage-painted DC-3 to Seymour Field on the island of Baltra. The scientists were going out to the Darwin Research Center to study the reluctant procreation tactics of Lonesome George, the last remaining giant tortoise of his kind. Or maybe find him another tortoise femme fatale from a neighboring island who would stimulate his libido.

The book informed me that in the 1600s, the Galápagos was a stop for the Spanish galleons on their way from Central America back to Spain with their absconded booty. One of the reasons Lonesome George didn’t have a lot of dating prospects was the passing seafarers (otherwise known as pirates) had stuffed the tortoises into the hold as a living food source. Another detail of interest in the book was about one of the first European settlers on the Galápagos—a larger-than-life character named Reinhart Schmidt, who still lived there in a cave. The hulking man standing in line in front of me might be one of the founding fathers, the original settlers of the Galápagos. Or their unshaven son.

I reached up and tapped this Schmidt fellow on the shoulder. “Can I buy you a Manicho?” I said with feigned innocence.

He turned slowly, sized me up as if I had antennas, then responded in a booming, shack-shaking American voice, “You bet!”

I gathered up a fistful of candy bars and followed him into the glaring midday sun. We sat on a nearby fishing pier and introduced ourselves. Freddy Schmidt seemed to like Manichos as much as I did. I think he also liked blonds.

We lounged on the splintered planks, slowly licking off the chocolate dripping from the wrappers. I asked, “Are you related to Reinhart Schmidt?”

“Yeah, he’s my dad. Sailed a boat here from Europe with his brothers. Said he was leaving because of Hitler.”

He asked, “Where are you from?”

“San Franciscan, fourth generation; my relatives arrived during the Gold Rush.”

“So you’re a hippie?” he asked with a smirk.

I didn’t answer, and after awhile Freddy asked, “Would you like to meet my wife? She’s American and really misses her friends and hamburgers. We’re on our honeymoon.”

We hopped into a small dinghy tied to the pier and he rowed us out to a sailboat anchored in the bay. Draped on the bow was a tanned bleach-blond babe in a shell-pink bikini.

Freddy yelled up at her, “Catch the line—we have a visitor from California.” She leaned forward, offering me her hand. I grabbed it and she pulled me aboard past her ample and obviously-enhanced bosom swinging like ripe cantaloupes. “My name is Sally Ann,” she said in a Southern drawl. Her teeth gleamed. She seemed thrilled to meet me. “Freddy and I met in Florida. We just got married and he wants to show me where he grew up so he built this boat and we sailed here through the Panama Canal, arriving just the other day.”

It was an odd pleasure to be in the company of Americans and be completely understood for the first time in months. Sally Ann told me all about her life in the States. “I have a little white poodle named Lollipop. He stayed with my mom. Freddy said I couldn’t bring him because he would be shark bait.” She kept her eyes down when she spoke and talked in breathless run-on sentences.

Freddy was pleased with our chatty connection and interjected, “I want to show my little wife the secrets of the Galápagos and my favorite boyhood haunts. We’re going to visit the pupping fur seals and my penguin buddies. Would you like to come along with us?”

Yes! This was why I had waited weeks in Guayaquil for the supply boat to be fixed (which it never was). This was why I had stayed in that dingy whorehouse serenaded by grunts and moans, itchy from sweat and bed bugs.

That Manicho I bought Freddy was turning out to be the best ten-cent investment I’d ever made.

At 21 I was naïve, and more enthusiastic than smart. I failed to consider that it was a little weird for him to invite me on their honeymoon and that he hadn’t consulted with his beloved. I bit the hook of a serendipitous once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be steeped in the insider’s secrets of Darwin’s Petri dish.

Nodding like a bobblehead doll, I asked, “What can I do in exchange for this generous offer?”

“How about you cook for us? Sally Ann doesn’t know how.”

It turned out Sally Ann didn’t know how to do much except work on her tan, but there was something sweet and sincere about her that I liked.

“I love to cook. When do you want to leave?”

“We’ll buy supplies and leave tomorrow after Reinhart’s birthday party.”

I was extremely relieved to have free passage to the wild island kingdoms—each of the twenty-one rocky dots of land a haven to exclusive species that had made Darwin salivate. Back in the early 1970s, it was not easy getting to the Galápagos, as proven by my several failed attempts. There were no tours or tourists. For me, it was part of a two-year solo wander-about in South America discovering the romantically epic and remote places I’d only read about in explorer books: the Amazon, Patagonia, Tierra Del Fuego, and of course, the Galápagos.

We rowed back to the pier, tied up the dinghy, and returned to the same tiny store where we met. He stocked up on flour-sack bags stuffed with carrots, onions, and potatoes.

I scripted gourmet menus in my head and asked, “Are we going to get any other food supplies?”

Freddy looked at me and said impatiently, “No, this is all they have, but we’ll troll for tuna.”

It appeared that my assigned job was not going to be very demanding, so I filed the recipes for mushroom cream sauce, conk with a Tahitian lime marinade, and gazpacho back in my mental cookbook.

After stowing away our supplies and stuffing my rucksack under the folding dining table, we hopped back into the tipsy dinghy and headed to shore for the birthday festivities.

Laughter, strumming guitars, and tinkling glasses serenaded us as we walked the short distance to Reinhart’s abode past driftwood fishing shacks and cinderblock huts, prickly pear cacti and thorny acacias. Candles lit the way along a stone path. As we approached the yawning cave entrance that Reinhart had carved out of the hillside, a barefoot man wearing only tattered swim trunks strode toward us. Freddy winced as he was clapped hard on the back and Sally Ann got a very long squeeze. Reinhart eyed me up and down and then gave me a bear hug, too.

Was he 50, 60, 70? It was difficult to discern his age as he had a permanently grizzled caveman look with long, untrimmed silvery hair, a muscular body coated in a Naugahyde tan, and fiery blue eyes.

Guests milled around the rocky entrance—mostly researchers from the Darwin Station. I recognized my two compatriots from our aborted fishing boat mission.

Grabbing my elbow, Reinhart swept me into his lair and filled an empty mayonnaise jar with white lightning. “Drink up! I bet you’ve never had this stuff before. It will set you on fire. I make it myself and also light the lamps with it,” he said with a wink and concussive back slap that almost knocked me over.

I tippled the clear liquid with a strong odor that made my eyes water and looked around at the hand-carved furniture, random bones, frayed sepia photos, seal and goat skulls, giant tortoise shells, and other bric-a-brac reminiscent of the Smithsonian that adorned his cave.

Outside, unadulterated stars appeared in the blue-black velvet canvas of the night sky. We danced for hours under their approving twinkle.

Reinhart was right. That hooch was mind-bending. I did things that night I still don’t remember but everyone else did.

The next morning as I crawled out from under a picnic table, Reinhart’s face appeared in front of mine. A wild, lascivious look lit up his eyes as he raved, “You are some wild dancer! Balanced on a table, spun like a top, and didn’t even break a leg.”

Pungent alcohol-fumed breath gusted forth as he declared, “Let’s have another party tonight! When’s your birthday?”

I backed out of his cave into the glaring sun and hobbled to port, looking for Freddy and Sally Ann. They were eating a late breakfast in the living room of the only restaurant in town that was really just someone’s house. A chicken ran between their legs as the proprietor chased it down with a cleaver. “Oh, look who’s still alive!” they chorused, not meaning the chicken, who was destined for our plates.

As I gingerly sat down at their table, Freddy said, “You didn’t tell us you were a pro dancer and party animal.”

I held my forehead, moaned, and said, “That really was not me. I was possessed by the firewater gods.”

The signora had caught the chicken and after a while, we could hear it sputtering in the frying pan. Later, we tried to eat it. It was so tough from being an Olympic marathon runner around the dining tables that all it was good for was a laugh as we bounced the rubbery drumsticks on the Formica table, looking rather like hung-over children with rattles.

Later, back on the boat, the sound of heavy metal chains bouncing off the hull jarred me awake from a much-needed afternoon nap. I was still feeling queasy as Freddy raised the anchor.

Boning up on the islands that we were about to explore, I read in a tattered history book used to steady the table leg that during the early twentieth century, the islands were inhabited by very few settlers and were used as a penal colony, the last closing in 1959 when the islands were declared a national park.

Might I have just been partying with ex-members of the penal colony that had graduated to “settler” status, otherwise known as convicts? These were my contrary thoughts as I found myself sailing forth once again with strangers.

We swept out of the harbor with a stiff wind at our back.

Sally Ann and I lay on deck, watching the feathery clouds sweep past overhead. Blearily I asked, “Where are we headed?”

Freddy’s ropey arms hoisted the sails. “First stop? My penguin buddies on Isla Fernandina.”

Freddy looked at me with a grin, probably still seeing me dancing on the table top. “Hey, bang a bottle on the prow and see if the dolphins show up.”

As the bow cut through the lapis waves, I leaned over its edge and thudded an empty beer bottle on the side. Thunk thunk thunk. Mesmerized by the bubbly curl on the lacy crests, a shadowy torpedo shape appeared, darting below the sea’s opaque surface. A sleek dorsal fin rose out of the water, and then a nose and the shining obsidian eyes of a bottlenose dolphin. Before I could yell back to Freddy that the bottle banging had worked, a pod arrived, leaping ahead of the boat. One by one, they swam into position inches from the boat hull. Swift and graceful, they choreographed their dance like an Ice Capades minuet in three-quarter time. Water sheeted off their compact steel-blue bodies. Pirouetting and spinning in joyous bounds, keeping ahead of the boat and grinning up at me, they were working really hard at having fun.

Realizing the sun was setting and distracted by mundane but demanding stomach growls, I asked, “What about the tuna? I should get dinner ready.”

“No problem.” Freddy threw a thick twenty-five-pound test fishing line with a wickedly barbed hook off the back of the boat.

I thought a lead-weighted hook with bait was supposed to sink, but the bait skipped along the ocean’s surface because we were racing across the water so quickly. As I pondered when I should heat up the skillet, the line pulled taut and a silvery tuna bounced along the wave tops, twisting and turning, trying to unhook itself. Just as Freddy was showing me how to reel the three-foot-long fish into the boat, a massive shark burst out of the water and snagged the hook and fish whole, then jerked it under the sea in the blink of an eye.

This became a daily occurrence, and with it came a dilemma. It was easy catching a tuna; the challenge was reeling it in before the sharks nabbed it. And there were a lot of super-sized sharks in the Galápagos due to the abundance of food sources in the nutrient-rich Humboldt Current.

When we anchored in a bay to swim to shore (more fun than rowing and much more dangerous) to explore the wildlife there, one of us would be assigned to shark watch while the others swam swiftly to the beach. The sharks’ fins could be seen circling far off, but the radius had to be several hundred feet before we felt safe enough to dive in and go for it. No time wasted dawdling or ogling, even if spotted eagle rays carpeted the sandy bottom. In one particularly crystalline bay, I was distracted by a school of translucent giant squid peering at me with luminous eyes. I circled above them but then heard Freddy shout from the boat, “Shark, shark! Get your ass to the beach!”

There was some karmic payback, though. We wanted to use the sharks for bait, but how would we catch them since they were too big to reel in on the tuna line? I had the answer—tampons! Two women whose menstrual cycles had synced after just a day of being in close quarters provided plenty of bait for catching tuna. We speared a bloody cotton tube to an ominously large hook and Freddy lowered it into the water.

Sharks are able to detect as little as one part per million of blood in seawater, so it didn’t take long to attract hefty hammerheads and greedy whitetip reef sharks. It is thought that the shape of the hammerhead shark’s head enhances olfaction, as the nostrils are spaced far apart. That might explain why there were so many of them churning the waters around the boat for a dinky tampon.

Leaning over the rail to watch the tampon sink downward in a watery pink halo, I stared in frozen horror into the giant, teeth-lined, gaping mouth that lunged upward. The tampon dangled far down in the dark precipice of its gullet. Most of the time we would just tease the sharks and pull the tampon up before they got hooked but when we needed meat for bait, Freddy would brazenly gaff the hammerhead with a huge steel barb and yank it over the rail in one mighty swoop. Sally Ann and I would jump back and hide behind the mast as the shark flailed on the deck. Freddy, in the stance of a gladiator about to slay his enemy, whacked the thrashing shark with a razor-sharp machete, severing its head. We had to be careful not to slip in the spattered blood and end up in the water bobbing like bait ourselves.

Over and over again, in morbid fascination, we watched these prehistoric monsters lunge from the sea toward our faces with only a handrail separating gnashing razor teeth from flesh. My entire head, neck, and shoulders would have fit in their mouths.

Every marine creature we encountered over the next two weeks came in extra large. Manta rays were ten feet across; thirty-foot whale sharks blocked the view while we snorkeled; moray eels snaked by, free-swimming in sets of three, each one a moss-green six-foot-long ribbon flecked in gold.

Then there were the land animals, each super-sized species living on a different island. Giant, slow-moving Galápagos tortoises reminiscent of Volkswagens as they crawled along the dirt trails as if in rush hour traffic; myopic and raucous blue-footed boobies laying eggs the size of tennis balls that we avoided crushing as we stepped cautiously over rocky terrain to overcrowded sea lion colonies; flamingo-carpeted lakes with so many of the birds gathered on their stilt legs that the water surface shimmered with their lipstick-pink hue.

Exhausted, on a beach that was an extra-long-distance swim to reach without ending up as an entrée, I took a nap. The sand was stark white and fine. It was quiet. I was alone. Our sailboat swayed far away in the bay. I had finally escaped the continuous haranguing that bounced around the boat cabin at Sally Ann from Freddy’s vitriolic mouth.

To my surprise, he had begun ridiculing her as soon as the journey commenced. In the mornings while I made coffee, he’d start with derogatory comments about her appearance. “You’re going to get fat eating so many candy bars,” or, “That’s a trashy outfit.” Or, “You’d look better with a different haircut.” What are you, a fashion consultant? I’d think. Sally Ann ignored him, which irritated Freddy even more.

I spread out on the hot sand, shedding not only my swimsuit but the stress of being stuck on that small boat with a contentious couple, and dozed off as the heat and sun melted me into the silky sand. A tapping on my foot woke me—a finch hopped between my feet. Meanwhile, I was being closely observed by a towering blue heron who blocked the sun as he stared down his beak at my supine body. I had also been joined by a fellow sun worshipper: a giant marine iguana lounged next to me, his leathery eyes closed.

As I lay there, feeling hemmed in and claustrophobic, a minute wiggling tickled my thigh. The sand was moving. A little head popped out and furious miniature flippers paddled the sand away from a palm-size baby green sea turtle. I had been napping on a nest. I leapt up, startled by the broiling sands underneath my nude derriere. The sand erupted as a brigade of tiny turtles emerged.

A sea turtle lays up to 110 eggs in each nest under the sand. It takes the concerted effort of at least 50 hatchlings to dig their way up and reach the surface. Sea turtles are phototactic, meaning that they are attracted to light. They are guided by the brightest light, which is usually sunlight reflecting on the sea. That is why they scuttled like mad to the surf, even as frigatebirds dove down and plucked them up like snacks.

Shooing the birds away, I cupped the terrorized baby turtles, soft like kid leather, and threw as many of them as I could into the deeper water so that they might have a chance to swim out to sea and come back here to lay eggs themselves someday.

Of the 50 unique and fearless animal species only found in the Galápagos archipelago—much of which were inspiration for Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection—the penguins were the only creatures that had not actively displayed curiosity toward us humans when we visited them in their colony on Isla Fernandina at the beginning of our trip.

They were small, shy, and adorable as the pair huddled together like lovers when the three of us rowed up to their rocky perch.

“They are real lovebirds, just like us!” Sally Ann exclaimed as Freddy rolled his eyes.

Freddy was surprised there were only two. Where had the others gone? Later, back on the boat, my frayed history book revealed that because of the Galápagos Penguin’s smaller size, it has many predators. On land, the penguins must keep an eye out for crabs, snakes, owls, and hawks, while in the water they are preyed upon by sharks, fur seals, and sea lions.

Freddy was subdued the rest of that day, sad about the demise of his penguin friends.

As we sailed from one island to the next, Freddy regaled us with stories of his boyhood exploits. He also bullied Sally Ann. The amazing animal discoveries were tainted by the foul residue from his insults that hung in the air.

Having never been exposed to verbal abuse, it took me awhile to recognize it for what it was—not just a Sanka-induced bad mood.

As I pondered why he would treat his new wife with such cruelty, I guessed that Freddy had been inducted into this school of intimidation by his short-fused father, now affectionately known in my head as “Caveman Reinhart.” Freddy never spoke about his mother.

Oddly, he was nothing but nice to me and delighted in my jubilant excitement about his animal kingdom tour.

After two weeks, the oppressive atmosphere was taking its toll on me. It was like being caught in a really bad sitcom where I was invited to laugh and nod and not react to the pain inflicted on Sally Ann.

One day toward the end of our adventure, I was looking at the horizon, squinting at the bright noonday sun, when I found a squished Manicho in my pack. Leaning against the shady side of the mast, my spine pressed hard and upright against the wood, crunching on the chocolate-covered stale peanuts, I wondered how much more abuse I could witness. “Stupid, don’t get your greasy lotion on the deck,” Freddy belittled Sally Ann yet again with a sneer. The bombastic tone made me nauseous. I peered around the mast. She was looking down at her perfectly manicured pink toenails. Freddy was pushing his face into hers, trying to get her to look at him, his hands flexed in fists. His neck muscles bulged with a sinewy, aggressive redness.

My eyes narrowed. It was time to end this traveling mess of a honeymoon. I stood up and walked toward him. I raised my hands in slow motion in a trance of fed-up-ness and shoved him hard in the chest, not caring if there were sharks circling. Not caring how or if we would get back to port. He slammed backward off the gunwale into the swirling, chilly, dark-blue waters of the Humboldt Current.

Sally Ann pressed her hand over her mouth and stared at me in shock. “Why did you do that?” she cried.

I did it for me. She didn’t want a protector or a savior. She had the dope flailing in the water, whom she was already helping back into the boat.

“Freddy, Freddy, Freddy! Are you all riiiiight?” She crooned it like a Country Western song, holding her hands to her heart and casting a scalding look in my direction.

Sally Ann pulled him into the boat, kissing and caressing him as he emerged from the sea like Neptune. Freddy shook water droplets from his charcoal-black curly hair and looked mystified, as if it didn’t register that a 120-pound woman had pushed him, a star college quarterback, overboard.

They were lovebirds, just like those two isolated penguins, the entire two-day sail back to Puerto Ayora. I did not get keelhauled or forced to walk the plank, though I did feel invisible. Freddy never raised his voice to Sally Ann again and she got all doe-eyed and giggly in his presence.

As we pulled up to port, I hugged Sally Ann goodbye. Behind her beauty queen smile rippled embarrassment, humiliation, and warmth mixed with hostility. Freddy was nowhere to be seen, so I quickly threw my bag onto the planks and headed to the store for a beer and a Manicho.

Leaning against a guano-splattered post, I slugged back the lukewarm beer. It had been a hell of a trip. I had witnessed the wild wonders of the Galápagos and the wild unpredictable terrain of the heart up close and personal. Freddy Schmidt, with his swagger and drilling voice, was a fine example of Darwin’s theory: The biggest, the loudest, the strongest with the most dominating genes wins the fairest maiden.

No wonder I have always been attracted to gay men.

Note that names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

“Mutiny in the Galápagos” is included in my latest book Wild Life: Travel Adventures of a Worldly Woman