so life on a boat while touring the galapagos islands is quite routine. wake-up, eat breakfast, go on a walking tour of an island, go snorkeling, head back to the boat, hang out/nap/chat/read/stare at the ocean, eat lunch, go on a walking tour of another island, go snorkeling, head back to the boat, shower, snack/hang out/nap/chat/read/stare at the ocean, eat supper, hang out/chat/shark-watch, go to bed, repeat. i had my bored moments here and there but considering i did that for a week, i´m impressed that i wans´t bored more often.
my highlights of the galapagos islands:
- i stalked a shark while snorkeling!!! it was a white-tipped reef shark that was about the size of me - so not huge, but they don´t get much bigger than six feet anyway. i really wanted to see a shark while snorkeling but wasn´t sure if i would freak out or not so i was quite glad that all i did when i saw the shark was yell, ¨shark!!!¨ into my snorkel tube and then followed it.
- i also stalked sea turtles while snorkeling. =) i was with three other people from my group the first time i spotted a sea turtle and all four of us proceeded to follow the sea turtle around. the funny thing is that we all found ourselves mimicking the sea turtle´s swimming motions - including when it popped it´s head out of the water to breathe. very graceful, peaceful animals. just goes with the flow of the tide. i also saw a few rays floating along the bottom - those are pretty, too. and i felt like i was in ¨finding nemo¨ at times because there were fish EVERYWHERE. pretty, colourful fish that glew-in-the-dark. yup, i just said glew. gotta brush up on my english before i head back to canada.
- i think most of the world´s population of sea lions live in the galapagos. it seemed liked they were EVERYWHERE. pretty sure they were on every island we visited. baby sea lions are SUPER cute. swimming with sea lions is kind of scary. i had one come at me with it´s jaws open, like it was going to bite me. i just tensed up, closed my eyes and waited for the pain but apparently it was just playing and had no intentions of biting me - or so the guide said. and adult sea lions are HUGE. pretty sure they normally get to be bigger than me so it was quite unnerving to see this massive mass of sea lion show up in front of you or under you while snorkeling.
- i got to drive a speedboat, a motorized raft/dingy, AND the boat we were staying on!!! we ended up speedboating to an island on the second day and it was a doube-decked speedboat with the driver up top. i was sitting in the back and kept looking up at the driver. the guy sitting beside the driver saw me looking so i asked if i could go up just to look and take a couple pictures. i went up and the driver offered me his seat and let me drive us to the island. that was fun. we also got taxied from the main boat to the islands via a motorized raft/dingy. they called them zodiacs. i was fortunate enough that the crew took a liking to me and so they asked me if i wanted to drive. i was conscientious enough to start with just me and a crew member in the boat but i was driving when the zodiacs were full of people by the end. that was fun. and there was one afternoon i was walking by where the captain sits to steer the boat (what´s the equivalent of a cockpit on a boat?) and saw the cook steering. so i just pointed and shook my head (thank goodness they understood my humour) and then he waved me in and let me steer. so i sat down and proceeded to take the boat off course. the cook was nice enough to let me try to fix it but he ended up having to step in and correct it and then let me go at it again. i eventually got the hang of it. the cook left when the captain came in and then he just sat down and started reading a newspaper, glancing up every ten minutes or so to make sure we were still headed in the right direction. that was pretty cool. i didn´t tell anyone on the tour until the day after.
- i get sea sick and i don´t like it. didn´t throw up but definitely fet nauseas and my head span like nothing else. a girl from australia had bought a bottle of a hundred anti-motion sickness pills from wal-mart. i popped two and that put me out for the rest of the night.
- capriniña (not sure if that´s how it´s spelt) - mojitos without the mint and made with sugar cane alcohol instead of rum. i had tried a shot of straight sugar alcohol in baños and nearly DIED because the stuff was so strong - you could run a car on that stuff. so i was quite weary of trying anything that had it. but the bartender on the boat made capriniñas well enough that i had my fair share of them.
- i am continually amazed by the cooks on my tours who are able to whip up good meals in tiny kitchens. my best meals - both in taste and in nutritional value - have all been on my tours.
- never underestimate the bargaining power of chocolate when you´re out in the midde of the ocean. =)
- never underestimate the amount of fun that can be had just by using new terms in an old game to suit the occassion. a group of us came up with galapajack - blackjack galapagos style. seemingly childish and simple but i have never had so much fun playing blackjack before - nor have i ever heard a group of people say ¨boobie¨ more than when we were playing that game.
- this was probably the most educational of all the tours i´ve done. i never knew there was so much you could know about lava until the guide started talking.
- there was a 69 year old lady with me for the last part of the tour and she was open to being a part of everything. she came out with us the last night in santa cruz and just danced her heart away. i want to be like that when i´m 69.
- i think i´m really going to enjoy retirement. there were a few retired folk on the tour and i was chatting with one the morning we were leaving. he asked me where i was off to next and i said home. he asked me if i was starting work again on monday. i said yup. he laughed. i believe that there was a part of him laughing at me for having to go back to work and a part of him that was laughing because he doesn´t have to go back to work. i want to be laughing like him one day - preferably sooner rather than later but we´ll see how that works out for me.
- having physiotherapists on board with you after you just rolled your ankle is super handy - especially when one specializes in sport physio. so i had my rented crutch scrutinized the night before we left, i had orders to ice my ankle and elevate it in the evenings, and she taped it up quite nicely for me. i was feeling like my ankle was doing ok by day three and was told to strap my crutch to my backpack just in case. didn´t use my crutch anymore after day 3. i don´t think a rolled ankle of mine has ever gotten better that quickly before - i´m impressed with it.
- so what´s a bad idea? being too confident in my ankle recovery and kind of forgetting to be careful and kind of rolling it again later in the tour while avoiding being sprayed by a crew member. still not painful to walk on but definitely still a little swollen, even today. oops.
- oh, and i learned that there´s a reason why i´m clutzy and suck at spatial recognition. apparently i score eight out of nine on some hyperelasticity scale - and 4 is where problems start. apparently i have too much collagen...somewhere...maybe it was in my joints(?). anyways, that´s why i never really know where my body is in relation to other things - like chairs, tables, the floor, trees, etc. and everyone who scores higher on this scale has a problem area - mine are my ankles. so there. it´s not because i´m careless or not careful. it´s because i have no idea where my body is. =)
- i´m continually amazed by how much fun i can have with people who don´t speak much english, if any. the crew had limited english and i had limited spanish but i had SO much fun with them and even managed to sit around and ¨chat¨ for a couple hours one night. there was definitely a lot of ¨huh?¨ going on and i´m sure a lot of misunderstandings but there were few nights that i laughed that much. good times. =)
- best meal of the trip: lobster dinner with chocolate cake for dessert on my last night. the cook traded chicken for lobster with a fisherman who caught a whole bunch of lobster on another ship. gotta love commodity trading. =)
i´m headed out to otavalo tomorrow for a day trip and then packing my bags for my flight out of here on friday morning. exciting news: i just realized that i get to check-in TWO pieces of luggage. i have picked up more stuff than i thought i was going to and the backpack i´ve borrowed from a friend is definitely full right now. which is ok for bus rides and what not but i didn´t want to put it through three airplane changes packed that full and now i don´t have to! i have a pretty sturdy, large plastic-but-not bag (kind of like the bags you would get twenty pounds of rice in) from a previous tour so i bought packing tape today and will stuff that bag and packing tape the heck out of it and call that my second piece of check-in luggage.
and so the end is near. kind of surreal. all of it. doesn´t really feel like i´ve been traveling for two months. doesn´t really feel like i´ve done all the things i´ve done. doesn´t really feel like i´m going back to canada in a couple days. defintiely doesn´t feel like i´ll be back at work on monday. not really sure when it´s going to hit me but hopefully before i get off the plane in calgary...
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