Tortuga Bay & Leaving Santa Cruz

Weather: HOT and very sunny

This morning Nicola, Sara, and I woke up around 8am and began packing our stuff up since checkout was at 9am. Once we were ready for the day we left our bags in reception and headed to the grocery store for some breakfast items. I got an apple and a piece of bread and we sat in the shade and ate up. We then walked to Tortuga Bay which was about 6 miles round trip. There's a nice trail to follow and you see mockingbirds, finches, and lava lizards along the way. The end of trail opens up to Tortuga Bay which is probably the prettiest beach I've seen although Puerto Chino on San Cristobal is beautiful too it's just a lot smaller. There's bad currents at the beach when you first get off the trail so we walked to what they call a "natural jacuzzi." It was a cove that was surrounded by mangroves and in the distance you could see the highlands of Santa Cruz. The views were really pretty and the water was so warm but refreshing after walking all that way. We hung out for about an hour

before heading back to town to grab our packs from the hostel. We headed to lunch at Descanso del Guia which is a restaurant Tania and Juan recommended. I got a veggie burger that was really good, not as good as Fresco's but I'll take a veggie burger whenever I can here. We had to be on the pier to wait for our boat at 1:30pm and when we finished lunch it was around 1:20. We couldn't have done it more perfectly if we tried.

While we were waiting for our water taxi to take us to the boat we saw a huge manta ray swimming around the pier as well as the baby black tip sharks. We got on the boat and it was packed, I think they let on more people than they should have because we were packed in like sardines and there was a guy that sat up with the captain which usually doesn't happen at least in my experiences thus far. We talked to these two women from Florida on the water taxi over and told them what we're doing here. They thought it was cool, but said "three months is a long time." They're not wrong but these ladies gave off the impression that they are uppity. They were very nice however, one of them had on fancy wedges...not a shoe that one should be wearing in the Galapagos especially when you are getting on and off water taxis. As the boat gets underway one of the women decides she doesn't want to sit in her seat anymore because the sun is hitting her face. So she stands in front of me (we were in the shade of the cabin) holding on to the bar that's on the ceiling. The ride is not smooth by any means, we hit a big wave, and sure enough she stumbles backwards and lands right in my lap...I was not a happy camper to say the least because if she just sat where she was supposed to that wouldn't have happened. However, looking around the boat afterwards many people were grinning and I was trying to hold in my laughter the whole time. She proceeded to stand after falling on me so eventually this Ecuadorian woman gave up sitting next to her teenage daughter to sit in the sun, so this woman could sit in the shade. At one point in the trip the teenage daughter was so asleep she was resting her head on the woman. The woman was not a fan of this (cause she's American and anything invading personal space is an immediate threat) so she moved forward and the girls head fell waking her up slightly. At the end of the trip, we asked them where they were staying and it ended up being close by which they were happy to hear. The other woman that didn't fall on me said "this is not what we were expecting as a ferry, we were expecting nice drinks and a lot of room." Clearly they don't realize they are in a developing country and most of the "ferry" boats used to be used as fishing vessels. Anyways, I'm ranting about this because it's these attitudes and perceptions that I am not looking forward to encountering when I get back to the states. Another example we saw today was a woman that had two kids close in age, I don't think one could walk yet and the other definitely would need assistance with moving around from the pier to the water taxi. This woman was giving the water taxi guy a hard time about her stroller and she seemed to not want to take her child out of the stroller for the taxi ride (this is not even possible so she was arguing for nothing). Going back to when we checked in to wait for our boat we heard this woman's husband yelling in English to an Ecuadorian girl "excuse me," several times. When she wasn't moving out of his way he went to nudge her with the stroller...the first language here is not English...so obviously she wouldn't be moving out of the way. I was baffled by how rude he was, and I was just hoping the whole time they were Europeans and not Americans.

Anyways, we made it back to San Cristobal around 4pm and the rest of the day was just me getting organized, journaling, and preparing for a new class tomorrow! This weekend was such a good trip and I am so excited/thankful we had the opportunity to go.