18
Location: Galapagos Islands
Today we woke up to sounds of loud blasting Hispanic music and what seemed like people in agony (turned out to be sea lions). We went down to breakfast which consisted of the best bread in the whole world, and what seemed like a cinnamon role surprise from Sky and Devin, turned out to be chocolate role surprise!!
After breakfast, we headed off to the market to pick up some lunch items that we would consume at the beach: avocados and all the stuff to make guacamole (aka Devin), AMAZING bread buns, NUTELLA, strawberry jam, ham and cheese, tuna, and a ton of tortilla and plantain chips. As we waited for the shopping process to finish, we ran into Josh, a guy we had flown into the Galapagos with and ran into for the 7th time that trip. It was as if we were following each other. Then, we headed to the beach, which was about a 45-minute walk.
It is a bay with a small forest at one end that you can walk through to visit a marine iguana lava rock beach, and then it winds into a cactus land beach and then into a protected estuary where we swam safely (away from the rip currents). The ocean waves were perfect surfing material, and Devin wished he could have surfed them.
He suggested we walk all the way across the beach to the estuary where it was safer to swim.
Shortly after that, we all sat down for lunch. Most of us had two sandwiches each. Being the healthy person that I am, I ate two large Nutella sandwiches, then Devin made us all some handmade guacamole (literally). Due to the lack of salt, we ended up pouring the rest of the tortilla chip crumbs into the Guac in attempts to make it saltier.
Isabel, Skyler, Sam and I went on a sand crab hunt. We dug for as many little sand crabs as we could find, and it was strangely amusing. We later blessed Cristina with the amiability to hold one of the crabs and her shriek was truly ear piercing (it was worth it though).
We went there and snorkeled a little. In our disbelief, there was not one, but TWO small sharks in the water less than two feet below us! Sam even managed to jump straight into a shark and then proceeded to freak out and jump right into me. This was truly incredible!!!
As a group, we talked about the benefits and consequences of ‘service’ for a good hour or so. We then headed to bed for an early travel day wake-up.