18
Location: Galapagos
To start off our last full day in the Galapagos, we woke up at 5:30 to get on our small boats at 6:00. They rang the bell and called us out of our rooms well before six….so that’s good. We all piled into the boats and went on a little boat tour around the mangroves. We saw dozens of cattle egrets flying off the mangroves as they woke up. The boats took us through until we spotted some sea turtles lazily swimming through the water. Many pictures were taken. Upon our return to the boat, we brought our luggage to the front and resumed our usual spot on the top of the boat. We sat for a while and applied more aloe to our burns (sorry mom, I’m a lobster now). They called us down and we got back into the small boats and went to shore. We anxiously watched as our luggage was brought over the same way. This is the part where we all got kinda agitated. A bus took us to the airport…but we were not leaving. From the airport, we boarded another bus that brought us to the ferry, which we took just a few days ago when we arrived in Galapagos. After the ferry, we got on yet another bus which brought us back to our hotel. We got into our rooms and laid around. We had lunch at a restaurant near the hotel and then were given the choice to lounge around or to make the most of our final day in Galapagos. The choice was obvious. We all walked the 15 minute walk to the National Park and walked around inside of it, trying to soak up anymore that we could. However, the sun was quite hot so half the group walked home and the other walked on a small beach for a bit and then to a ceramic garden full of mosaics. They came back soon after. At 3:30 we made our way downstairs. We were given our phones so we all called home to let our families and friends know how we were doing. A group of students went grocery shopping for our packed lunches tomorrow. The grocery store didn’t have much to offer, but we’ll manage. After shopping, we did our final rounds of the tourist shops. Once back, we used our phones even more and a few of us did interviews about our trip (all good things!). Thank goodness it was time for dinner. We walked to a street filled with tables and picked a restaurant that looked like it had good tacos. We ordered our food and the tacos were, in fact, good! The students screamed for ice cream on the way back, but a dog scared us so we ran back to the hotel. We were promised ice cream if we were good during our meeting. We went back to a hand activity we had done in the Amazon and thought about how we had grown over the trip. Reflecting on past times (even just 3 weeks ago) is good. We read a story about a school teacher and learned what our final task would be. You’ll have to wait till we get home to find out. The ice cream goal was achieved! A large group of us went down to our favorite ice cream shop and took the last of what was delicious ice cream. Gotta get packed tonight because we’re leaving tomorrow. Adios, Galapagos.Â