Galapagos Trip

The Galapagos was a very intense yet interesting trip I have ever been part of.  First off, it was filled with obstacles that I have never experience and secondly, it took to a different part of my life that I never thought could explored.   Our first day of traveling took approximately 25 hours of traveling.  We left SFO airport at 6 AM to fly to Atlanta with another flight to Quito, Ecuador at 4 PM. We finally arrived in Quito at approximately 9 PM.   Before I begin the exact trip, I must throw in a little comical story. Deborah who is the General Manager of Bon Appetite, picked me up at Dominican at  3:45 AM to catch the 4:00 AM Marin Airporter. Well, we were running a bit late because the air porter we were trying to reach left the station at 4:15 so, she wanted me to drive and she told me to hit the pedal to the metal so I did and as we were traveling down the free way, a highway patrol officer pulled us over because I was apparently going 85+ on the freeway. Being that I live in San Diego, I had no idea the freeways in Marin are 55 MPH.  Every freeway in San Diego country is 65 or 70 MPH! Well, the cop asked for my driver’s licenses and Deborah’s insurance card. Deborah kindly asked the Police officer to be kind with us and he did! He just scared me a bit with his question “Do you know how fast the speed limit is here? And did you know if I was to give you a ticket, how much that would cost and if I knew that if he did write me a ticket, I would loose my license for 20 days!” Of course I didn’t know any of that so the nice Highway Patrol officer let us go and we made it just in time to catch the air porter…Oh yeah, as we were pulled over, the air porter passed us before our destination station. 

I am going to sum up this trip in a paragraph or two. There was so much that happened that I would need at least another page to three to tell everything! We saw tons of tortoises, birds, dolphins, sea lions, sea turtles, spiders, hiked volcanoes, horseback riding, had some pretty delicious food, yummy fruit drinks, some ugly hotels and some really nice hotels, we stayed at research station that was very different from what most of us are use to, 6 of us got diarrhea,  4 went to the ER room,  1 got heat stroke while another got an ear infection.  2 people almost drowned while another was almost electrocuted, one person yelled at the tour guide, many were drunk and got hang over’s from drinking, plenty of people got sea sick on our 2+ hours on boat rides from island to island.  Our tour guides were awesome except for one who really knew his stuff but was very condescending to the group. There was plenty of drama with students who didn’t like each other. At points, I felt many people were creating alliances or clicks. 

I will be posting pictures very soon of the trip.  With the pictures I will also put captions.  So check back soon!