Heidi Connal

We woke up with the roosters, and Liz rallied out of bed for a quick 3 mile run.  Breakfast was at the hotel (the Blue Marlin) with the group, and a seemingly benign conversation about books turned into a talk about e-books and Fifty shades porn. Can’t make this stuff up.

Morning Marathon:

We walked down the the Galakiwi offices to get suited up for our morning snorkel trip.  This was my one opportunity to dive in the Galapagos – though I was the only diver – and I was excited to go underwater.

While we waited for the gear assembly we watched the handful of 100 runners who were running the Galapagos Marathon. It was a brutally hot day, and we sweat just cheering them on – but we still cheered.  They appreciated it since there was no one else out in this heat to clap.

This was a great group to travel with.  We all liked to laugh and have fun, as was evidenced by a re-visit from a big black (native) Galapagos carpenter bee.

Liz: *jumping up*  “Oh no! A carpenter bee!”

Lina: “Why? Are you made of wood?”

These things never seem as funny when written out later, but five of us laughed hysterically for a while.

Before our snorkel destination we stopped to bird watch and learned the differences between the blue footed boobies and frigates.

Snorkel #1:

As soon as my dive master Franklin realized I was a dive instructor, he quickly changed our itinerary.  “This is too easy a dive for you.”  So I snorkeled the first time rather than dove the first time out.  The visibility wasn’t great, but we had a very playful sea lion that came sort of close.

We knicknamed Amanda and Lina “the gigglers” becauser they constantly made each other laugh.  I loved being around a group that has so much fun together.

Dive #1 

For our first dive, Franklin and I dove through a gorgeous cavern.  We saw some black tip reef shark and another sea lion.  I love diving with sea lions – they’re so fast, sneaky, and playful.  One minute you’re diving along and looking at coral, and the next minute you have a pair of huge eyes and whiskery sea lion in front of your mask.  They like when you do flips underwater, because then they can dart in and out around you and your bubbles.  This makes me ridiculously happy.

Lunch

We ate lunch on the boat, taking bites between an animated discuss about animated movie.  And then we had a walk a nearby beach. This was a bit of an ordeal since one of the motors wouldnt rise so we couldn’t back up too far into shore.  This prompted a hilarious process of each of us jumping off the side and wading in.  Pablo told us all about mangrove trees and how they use water to take root elsewhere on the beach.

Dive #2

Franklin and I returned to the cavern for another dive and in search of the hammerheads.  We saw eagle rays and turtles, and some schooling hammers off in the distance.

Interpretation Center:

Back on San Cristobal we quickly changed and hopped on a bus to the “Interpretation Center”.  It was still hot and humid, and we were all walking a bit slower from the morning’s activity.  (“They don’t call this Active South America for nothin’!”).  The Interpretation Center was a place (unfortunately not air conditioned) where Pablo could use background maps and exhibits to tell us all about lava flow, the Nazca shelf, water currents, air, and animals, and how all of this created the Galapagos Islands as we see them today.  We learned that the easternmost islands are the oldest, because the Nazca shelf moves from West to East – with the east eventually disappearing underneath the South American plate.  Thus the volcanic activity.

We also learned about the flightless cormorant, which we wouldn’t see on this trip because they’re only in specific areas of two islands.  There are also 14 different types of finches, though all of them can be traced back to one kind of finch.

Having said all of that, we also learned a great deal about Darwin.  I had no idea that he visited the Galapagos at 24 years old but didn’t actually publish his theories until the age of 49.

Finally – when the heat had gotten the best of us and we all needed naps – Pablo told us about the crazy settlers who landed on Floreana.  Like the dentist who brought his lover to Floreana; they both pulled all their teeth so they wouldn’t have any teeth problems when they got there.  And then there was the “Baroness” Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner-Bosque who lived there with her two German lovers and who treated everyone as her underlings.  All of this is documented in a book called The Galapagos Affair which, as of this writing, has a whole five reviews on Amazon.com.

Dinner on our Own

After a walk back into town, we were all on our own for dinner.  Liz and I opted for athe “San Jose BBQ” which was outdoors with plastic tables and chairs.  There was a huge grill filled with fresh meats and fish.  We almost ordered pescado for two but decided to split it – a good thing too since it was HUGE.

We also ordered beer but the waitress said something about “no” and “Sunday”. Liz joked, “Apparently they haven’t evolved that far yet.”

On the way out of the restaurant we ran into Pablo and asked him to point us to dessert.  He sent us to a tiny little bakery right around the corner. There, we waited for over 5 minutes – which is notable because we were the only ones there until 5 Ecuadorian women came in after us and walked right in front of us to the counter. Apparently Aggressiveness is rewarded here, so after a few minutes of still not being served, Liz looked up “cake” in her dictionary and then got her pushy on. The end result: us back in the room with a cake and a chocolate covered donut.  (a word which, incidentally, has no translation in Spanish)

Again, we were in bed by 9:00.