Wednesday, April 28, 2011:
My boat trip wasn’t until 2:00pm today, so I had time to kill. After getting up, I wandered over to the apartment of Pablo’s girlfriend. Pablo is from Cuenca and his girlfriend works in the Galapagos, so he is staying with her there. She was at work and he was in his underwear preparing some breakfast when I knocked on the window and yelled, “is Pablo here?!” Thanks to general hospitality, I was invited to eat with him and being a college student on a tightening budget, I happily accepted.
After breakfast, I wanted to spend time just doing nothing on the pier looking out at everything, eating and a nice sun nap. And that’s exactly what I did until it came to my 2:00pm boat ride to San Cristobal. The boat was the equivalent of a big cruiser you’d find in the Mississippi River but it was modified to transport 22 people and their luggage. We were packed like sardines around the sides of the boat, but I didn’t notice a bunch because there we passed an island named Santa Fe which resembled something out of Jurassic Park. See the picture. After that, we still had about another hour of driving ahead of us. This is when it started getting uncomfortable and I had to move to the middle of the boat where everyone’s feet where so I could stretch out. The people sitting next to me were happy as well because it gave them more room.
We arrived in the port to about 10 sea lions lying on the steps. I literally had to walk around them. I heard this island had a lot of them, but damn… it was a site to see one or two on the unpopulated islands. Here, they’re more common than Pigeons on the street in Chicago! If you go close to them though, they barely move. If they get mad, they may waddle toward you and squawk to chase you away, but that doesn’t happen a whole lot. It’s incredible how slow and fat they are on land, but once they get into the water, they are as agile and quick as a fighter jet. I wasn’t intimidated by them until I learned that if you get bit by them you could get that bad infection I mentioned earlier. So, I decided to keep my distance.
Soon after I found my typical Latin American hostel (a piece…), I walked outside to look for something to eat and I ran into Jenny, one of Andres’s friends who convinced me to come to the island. I ended up joining her for a something to eat along with Marica, Hannah, and Suave (Andres) at a very popular outside restaurant/bar named Casa Blanca right down the boardwalk. Typical island life, we were there for a few hours just chatting it up and I was eventually invited to their “tapas dinner party” they were having that night. They said they were going to be cooking small tapas like food and to bring some wine – easy enough. After Jenny and Hannah left, I stayed at Casa Blanca until 8:00pm with Marica and Suave hanging out. We picked up our drinks and headed to their house.
At the house was Hannah (from Sweden – it was her last week), La Nega (Galapagos local – I forgot her real name), Andres (Suave), José Luis (Columbian Fisherman who lives in the Galapagos), Lobo (another Galapagos local), Jenny (From Main, did the GAIS program that I was thinking about doing but 4 years earlier and now married to a Galapagos local), Veronica (from Switzerland, just got here a couple days ago), and Marica (from Holland).
José Luis brought an octopus for the girls to cook and that was some of the BEST sea food I had eaten in my life. For real… octopus from the Galapagos caught fresh that day… can’t be beat. The food was delicious and we just all sat, talked, and joked around for about 2-3 hours. As we ran out of food and drink we decided then head over to a bar/”club” called Iguana Rock.
At Iguana Rock, there were not a whole lot of people there, but what do you expect for a Wednesday night anywhere, let alone, a small island. We were only there for about an hour when we decide to stroll over to the pier area and after seeing all the fish swimming underneath us, Jenny had the great idea to jump from the pier and go swimming. I thought it was a fantastic idea so we jumped off the pier and swam around it about 3 times. Eventually, La Negra and her Brazilian lover boy for the night along with a few Englishmen decided to join us. Everyone else stayed on top of the pier to embarrassed or something to get it. I’ll swim with the sea lions and fish any day…
Finally, it got late and I was itching to talk with Nicole. I went back and grabbed my things from the apartment/house we were at and called Nicole on my Ecua-phone. There was no internet access at night. What a pain in the butt, but what do these people need internet access for when they have everything they could want on the island!
After talking for a bit, I realized that my hostel was dead-bolted shut and I had no way of getting in to get to my room. I tried yelling up to la senora who was the owner, but I think she sleeps like dad. There needs to be an atomic bomb to get her up. I had no choice but to scale the side of the hostel. I started by sticking my foot into the medal crossbar door and hoisted myself up high enough so that I could barely grab the second floor ledge with my finger tips. From there, I had to use my upper body strength to reach over to the neighboring second floor terrace and fling my legs up onto the ledge. I pushed up from the ground of the outside ledge of the terrace and stood up so that I was standing rect outside the guard rail of the next door 2nd story balcony. As I was straddling the railing to get to a safe spot, someone popped their head out of my hostel on the second floor with the expression, “what are you doing?” on their face. I sternly gave them a “the door needs to be unlocked” response. From the neighboring balcony, I had to shimmy over to my building on a 3 inch ledge, my chest firmly pressed against the facade of their building. I hopped over the railing and was safely inside and ready for bed.
Like I said before, you don’t need exercise in Ecuador. Something always comes up that takes care f that for you naturally…
Nighty Night.
Michael
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