GALAPAGOS beyond the islands
They were called the enchanted islands,
because they had the attribute
to appear and disappear
in the middle of the sea,
hundreds of miles from the continent
and they were or were not
before the eyes of fatigued sailors
that could not established their actual location.
It was said that when pirates went to the Islands on purpose,
to hide in their caves the fruits of their boardings,
they could not find them,
but when they were navigating a course to other places,
the Islands appeared before them as if they came out of nowhere.
For the other sailors,
hidden in the fog and in the legend,
the Islands were sometimes referred to as Ninacumbi
and Huachichumbi,
and other times they were called Easter Island or Polynesian Island,
always enigmatic and beautiful
in the middle of the stormy sea and its confines.
It was said that a general,
called Villamil,
went on a journey carrying on board the end of a rope
which he dragged across the ocean,
navigating in a straight line
till he reached the Islands
and tied them up and bound them
firmly to the coast of the continent
where the other end of the rope was buried.
And since then, they have remained firm,
although sometimes
they get back to their enchantment
to exist
or not to exist.
Many men
had been shipped to the Islands to serve a prison sentence,
however the penal colony was dissolved
because the authorities realized that the place
would be better used for tourism then punishment.
Some convicts escaped
and hid in the highlands,
decided to stay in this paradise,
because once away from the environment
which had pushed them into crime,
they had been reformed,
they loved the liberty,
they valued the price they had paid for it
and they were able to appreciate the beauty and the wideness of the sea.
In the Islands they had found themselves,
they had been purified from vicious habits of the civilization,
and even if they were consumed by leisure and boredom
below the blazing sun,
they were spending time sitting on the cliffs,
watching the horizon,
waiting for the ship that would bring them a letter
or an old newspaper to see the world,
from the distance,
and they were becoming increasingly established in their world of sand.
Little did the hundreds of tourists,
who were daily arriving and leaving, matter to them.
They were only few native people there,
but they had a well defined personality:
they had learned to enjoy looking into the soul of the things
without haste.
They had discovered the secret that things have soul
and that it can take years to find it.
They could not write as the poets can,
but if they could,
they would have discovered
new worlds.