GalapaGOs!

Dear Chris Kwon,

As you already know, my Carnaval weekend was spent in the famous Galapag

os. My experience was absolutely nothing like I had expected. It started out early on Friday morning. I caught a cab to the airport, where I had to pay $110 just to get onto the islands. I had brought only a backpack and a purse. The backpack had aerosol sunscreen and bugspray, a razor, and a 32 oz bottle of water. I saw some aerosol cans lined up in security and got nervous. I had nothing confiscated, however. We had a layover in Guayaquil and made it to the Galapagos. Before we landed, the cabin crew sprayed some sort of disinfectant all over our stuff. It was toxic smelling and I thought I had stopped breathing. I lived and ee landed on Isla Baltra, which looked like a desert. We had to stop on the tarmac for a while, because we were waiting for an animal to get out of the way.

Oh Galapagos. We exited the airport (which is really a shack with no doors or windows), boarded a bus, got off the bus, boarded a ferry, crossed a small harbor to Isla Santa Cruz, got off the ferry, and traveled on a very straight road for 45 minutes. Final destination: Hotel Fiesta.

Hotel Fiesta is in Puerto Ayora, which is the main part of the second biggest island" Santa Cruz. I love PA. It's a small town, which mostly caters to tourists. We had a disappointing lunch at the hotel and bused to the Charles Darwin Center, where turtles are raised for 3 years, then released into the wild. The turtles were huge!

The next morning, I woke up at 6, thinking it was 7, because there is an hour time difference. We boated to a seal infested island, I believe is called Playa de los Perros. We boated to another island where we saw a ton of iguanas. Igu

anas can swim. We were boated to yet another island. We were supposed to go to some sort of salt mine. We ended up at a channel between two cliffs. We swam in the channel for a while (there were bottom feeding fish everywhere). We hiked back to a boat, boated to Puerto Apoyo, and walked back to the hotel. After lunch, we had the option of paying $5 to go to a beach for some swimming. We all decided that sounded like fun, so we boarded the bus and headed to a beach. Natalee and I rented snorkels and flippers, but the water was too murky to see anything. Ho

w sad. We ended up playing in the waves and it felt very similar to Florida: warm water and salty, so I can actually float. Before we went to the beach, Alex was putting sunscreen all over her face. I made fun of her for putting sunscreen on her chin. Who gets burned there? It was cloudy out, but I still put sunscreen on. I burned horribly- on the nose, the upper lip and the chin. It looked like I had been in a cherry pie eating contest.

On Sunday, we left the hotel at 8:30. We were headed to the opposite end of the island. We stopped at Gemelos (twins), which were two huge craters. They photographed horribly, but they were very deep and interesting. We boarded another boat and boated for about an hour to a seemingly uninhabited island. There were a bunch of seals and blue footed boobies (a notorious Galapagos bird), but no place to dock the boat. We circled the island and saw two people (from the United States) who lived and researched on the island. Their only protection from the elements was a tarp over a cave. They were friendly and waved to us, but so did the seals. On the boat, we ate a delicious lunch of fresh salad and tuna. We boated out to a beach and were given some goggles. I swam among gorgeous tropical fish. I saw a lot of tang, which are really common in pet stores. The beach was fairly new, because the sand was mostly crushed shells. It was beautiful, but still overcast.

Our tour group had 16 people in it, which consisted of me and my three fellow travelers, a family of 3 from Virginia, a family of 5 from Guayaquil, and a family of 4 from Guayaquil. We ended up getting really close to the Guayaquil families (it's weird how much more we identified with the Ecuadorians than with the Americans). On the way back from the "snorkeling", the eldest son of the Guayaquil children asked us if we wanted to go to a bullfight. Three of us agreed, because we wanted to be fully emerged in the culture and the bullfight was part of Carnaval. The bus dropped us off in the middle of the island and we walked around the stadium. It was absolutely packed. I was ready to give up, but gave it one last shot. I strayed from the group and stood by the bull pen (so to speak). There were some rodeo clowns in the arena who were preparing the audience for an epic fight. I watched as the bull sadly sat in his pen. He was released. One other gringo and I were the only ones taking pictures. We gave each other sympathetic looks and moved on. I end up straddling a fence with some kids in order to see the fight. I took a lot of pictures. The rodeo clowns stood next to me and told me the view was much better from inside the arena.

The fight started out with the bullfighter and the bull. The bull seemed really apathetic to the whole experience, so they brought in some guy (whom everyone called "drunk") and he tried to agitate the bull. In the Galapagos during Carnaval, the childr

en spray each other with foam. The bull was covered in foam. I was assured that the bull was not going to be killed, but the poor thing sure was tortured. The bull would occasionally get agitated and run after the "drunk" with no shirt on. There was talk of switching the bulls, but I don't think that ever happened. The rodeo clowns jumped in the ring with a cow and tortured it. The crowd (which was mostly locals) laughed up a storm. Along with one of the Guayaquil families, we left the bullfight. We taxied it back to the hotel, showered and changed, and walked around the town. We made it back to dinner and passed out really early. Long day.

Yesterday morning, the first day of Carnaval, we woke up and were taken to see some tunnels. Again, they were barely photogenic, but interesting. We walked around an area that was a real turtle habitat. We took more pictures with the turtles and walked up to a mini cabin on the grounds. We were served free coffee from a white guy, who had a perfect U.S accent. I asked him where he was from and he said he didn't know. His parents moved to the Galapagos in 1949 and he was born there. At the time, his parents worked for the PI and they were doing a piece on the Galapagos. They ended up staying. Chevre.

After lunch at the hotel, we walked for about an hour to Tortuga Bay, which has a huge gathering for Carnaval. It was an interesting experience. For the first time all weekend, I saw some blue in the sky. Tony, our tour guide, bypassed the main beach (which had TONS of amazing waves- oh how I want to surf) and headed to a more tranquil spot, which had zero waves. We waded there for a while with the Guayaquil families. The mom of one of the families was entertaining some strange little girl. As it turns out, the little girl was the daughter of a famous model, who was sitting on the beach. All of us "kids" (the four of us U.S students were unofficially adopted by the Guayaquil families) went to play in the waves on the other beach. We had a foam fight (sort of like silly string) and I was super content while diving into the waves. After a long time of playing, we exited the water as half-human/half prunes. We were headed back towards our parents when we stopped to watch a male pageant. It was for Mr. Tortuga Bay. The winner was to receive the title and $100.

A man from our hotel was a finalist in the competition, so we cheered him on. He lost to a really attractive man. The Miss Tortuga Bay competition was up next. All of us joked about going up there (all of the Guayaquil kids are boys, so they were pushing us to compete). Natalee eventually gave in and entered the contest. She had to dance on stage with 9 other girls. It was hilarious and slightly embarrassing, but we had to show support to our fellow Gringa. The competition was based on crowd cheering. The crowd was to cheer for 3 finalists. Natalee

seemed to have made it, but the Emcee told her to leave the stage. Our family protested and she was dragged back on stage. She ended up winning the contest! She only won $60 though (sexism). Our Guayaquil families were SO proud. Everyone was taking pictures of her and us and our family. It was amazing.

We trekked the hour back to the hotel, where we had dinner, then had complimentary cocktails for Carnaval. The Guayaquil families walked with us into town, bought us ice cream, and hung out with us on the dock. The dad of one of the families had an AMAZING camera (I will soon have access to all of his pictures, so get excited). He took a million pictures of all of us on the pier- even individual photos. It was exactly like prom. At 11, some concerts began. We listened to some unknown people sing some well known songs. As Miss Tortuga Bay, Natalee had to sit up by the stage with other contest winners. It was sort of a big deal. Shauntee, Alex and I were sort of bored, so we walked around the town. We eventually ended up at a nightclub and danced with marines. Haha. Our Guayaquil father had taken a picture of us with the marines earlier. Us gringas pretended to Salsa dance, while the marines were probably super bored. We made it back to the hotel around 2 and wiped out.

This morning, we said our goodbyes to one of our families, who told me to call them when I'm in Guayaquil on the 19th (my friend Mackenzie is coming on the 19th, so I will be in Guayaquil). The family has a house in Salinas- a famous beach town- and they told us their door is always open for us. The mom is a great cook and all the meals would be covered for. I LOVE this family. I truly hope we meet up with them. I hate to impose and have no idea how to repay them, but I think it would be rude if I didn't take them up on their offer.

We looked at more tunnels on our way to the airport. Again, we got to the airport way too early. I was exhausted and zoned out for an hour. Our flight left and I made it safely home to Quito, but not without paying a ridiculous $5 for a cab ride home.

I apologize for the lack of photos. I read somewhere that you can have an old point and shoot on the Galapagos and you would seem like a professional, but my photos didn't turn out so great. I will steal the Guayaquil dad's pictures and eventually post them somewhere. I had an amazing time and feel truly blessed that I got to do something that all biologists dream of doing, even though I practically failed biology. Ha. Ha.

Happy Fat Tuesday everyone. Lent starts tomorrow, so that means more chocolate and sugar will be left for me! Yay for not being Catholic.