Galapagos!

(Written 7/28/13)

Hey guys, I made it to Galapagos!

After a long, tedious process at the airport, I made it to San Cristobal Island in the Galapagos. I was picked up by my family for the weekend and taken up to our home. In the morning, I'll head to the volunteer lodge and begin my volunteer work.

Yesterday after I arrived, the 11 yr old daughter, Dayana (pronounced like Diana) took me to the visitor's center which was on my list of things to see anyway. Dayana took me through the visitor center the way any 11 yr old would go through a visitor's center. Quickly. But, she did give me her own version of the tour which was nice and helpful. I'll be sure to go back and read/see more on my own time because it looked like it had a lot of great information and in English (yay!).

The REAL reason we went to the visitor's center was it's where there is a great swimming hole for snorkeling. However, the water was FREEZING. It wasn't too bad after your entire body went numb lol. This swimming hole had a few sea lions so it was pretty cool swimming around with them. There was a group of Americans there to snorkel as well who were also struggling with the water temperature. Imagine 20 people screaming "cooooooooold!" into their snorkels and it sounds just like a sea lion mating call. Thank goodness I can swim and tread water because the sound had me laughing for 15 minutes straight.

After we climbed out of the freezing water we headed to a beach with more sea lions but also tortoises swimming in the waves. The tortoises in Galapagos are nothing like the tortoises back home. They're massive. They're about 3 ft long and 2 ft high. Huge. Apparently I'll see a lot more up in the highlands where I volunteer. I got a kick out of watching them swim in the waves because I've always thought of them as slow, lazy animals but I guess not.

As we headed back home, Dayana told me that there was a place to wash our feet and put our shoes on down the path. As we walked through the dirt and rocks barefoot for 15 minutes, I started to wonder if I misunderstood her Spanish, thinking, "If I knew we'd walk this long in the rocks and gravel I would have said 'who cares' and put my shoes back on with sandy feet". I honestly flashed to the scene in It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World where the guy drives his car into the river because he's blindly following a child he doesn't understand. And now I can count on one hand the number of people who will get that reference (Uncle Tom, I hope you're reading).

To my delight, Dayana was right, there was a great place to wash off our feet and put our shoes on just down the road. I will no longer doubt her.

This morning Dayana took me to another beach right near the airport that was surrounded by lava rocks. She acted as a great guide, spotting 5 marine iguanas I would have never noticed if she didn't point them out. It was pretty cold this morning so we didn't swim, but took a great hike around the beach seeing sea lions (yup, I think there are more sea lions than people), crabs and little finches (as in Darwin's finches).

It is really beautiful here. The whole town is very quiet (except for the neighbors, naturally) and it feels like a quaint little fishing town. For anyone who has ever been, the geography feels most like Aruba. A lot of dry land and cactus, but very beautiful.

As for the neighbors, they aren't too loud and stop all noise at night so I can't really complain. However, if you consider the family's goat and rooster "neighbors", they ARE loud. When the rooster crows at sunrise in the movies, this is a LIE. This rooster didn't care that you were trying to sleep, it was determined to crow every 45 minutes beginning from 2am until I got out of bed at 8am. I'm pretty sure at one point I even dreamed of throwing a shoe at it.

That's all for now, I got to get to bed early to get up early for work.

Chao!