Weather: Sunny and 80

Today for class we took a 360 tour which is a boat ride that goes around all of San Cristobal. It was basically a repeat of the 180 tour I took in political ecology, except this time we went to two additional places. We were at the tour shop for 7am and on our way to the boat for 7:30-8am. Our first stop was Rosa Blanca which is super gorgeous but I will never get over how many microplastics there are. We stopped here with political ecology to pick some of the plastics up. Returning today there were so just as many if not more microplastics on the shore. We walked to a lagoon to snorkel. The last time we were here we didn't see anything really besides a turtle but today was different! The visibility was not great at all, but we saw a handful of white tip sharks. They were the biggest ones I've seen I'd say. We also saw a giant sea turtle swimming about. It was an awesome snorkel, once we went around the whole lagoon area we headed back to the lava field. Some people chose to go on another snorkel at the coral beach, but a bunch of others and I walked to a different beach near where we were dropped off. I hadn't been to this beach before and the amount of plastics that were there was absolutely devastating. It is such a pristine beach from afar but up close on the beach seeing that damages it a bit for me because while I want to just enjoy the view, seeing the plastics angers me. After hanging on the beach for about a half hour we headed back to the boats (our class was broken up into two separate boats for the trip because we were too many of us).

We headed to Playa Sardinas. This is a beach that’s only accessible to the boats that run the 360 tours. The water was clear as day and there were bunched s of puffer fish swimming about. The boats dropped anchor and lunch was served. Shortly after we were able to jump off the boat and had the option to swim to shore if we wanted. Sara and I waited for the food to digest a bit and then hopped in. The water was quite cold so we didn’t swim to shore but we stayed in for a good amount of time and hopped back on board to rest before heading to our next stop.

Punta Pitt was next on the tour. We didn’t get off for a hike but we did cruise around and look at all the different birds. We saw red footed boobies which made my day because it’s the one bird from the Galápagos I haven’t seen. Punta Pitt is incredible and the views are great. I would’ve loved to hike, but it was a warm/sunny day so it was probably for the best. After Punta Pitt we headed to Cerro Brujo. The beach of Cerro Brujo is one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve been to. I was glad to have the opportunity to visit it on my trip to Kicker Rock in my climate change class because we stayed in the boat for this as well. We didn’t go near the beach but we went into a big crevice in the rock structure to look at three different tunnels that are all next to each other. It was beautiful and made for some nice pictures. Our last stop was Kicker Rock for a snorkel. At most it was a 20-30 minute snorkel and the sad thing is we only saw one lone turtle and some fish. There were no sharks! This happens sometimes but it was unfortunate. I had hoped to see some sharks since it marked my last trip of my semester. I was thrilled to see the white tips earlier in the day though so I can’t complain. After Kicker we headed back to Puerto Baquierzo and arrived around 4. Megan, Sara, Thomas, Eve, and Micah all headed to get some ice-cream from Jessica’s Tienda. They have 1.50 soft serve cones and it’s pretty good.

Later in the evening, I showed my host family some pictures from my day and ended up talking with Ana about some of the issues in the US. She asked about Trump and asked if he was actually racist. It was interesting but for a 13 year old to understand the political climate in a different country is pretty impressive. For dinner, Sara and I went to Galápagos Dreams which was pretty good and it was nice to change things up a bit. Afterwards, we got some snacks and met up with Nicola for a girls night. We did face masks and watched Life as We Know It. It was really nice just to chill. Around 11:30pm
I headed home for the night and went to bed.