Adapting to Galapagos

There is no way to catch it all except in fragments before I forget.
I am in the Galapagos now, and Quilotoa feels like a lifetime ago. I will still try to capture it before Galapagos takes it over and before Mindo takes over Galapagos.


Right now: Mockingbird Cafe in Galapagos, post breakfast, listening to Bryan Adams sing Ëverything I Do¨ in Spanish. This priceless CD is all 90´s covers in Spanish, including Glenn Medeiros´¨Never Gonna Change My Love for You¨.


Surprise of the Trip: Starbucks buys 85% of the Organic coffee grown in the Galapagos. This changes my snobbery of them entirely. Now if only the baristas had uniform training on how to make a cappucino.


Friday 5/29
Woke up sick as a gringo. Couldn´t keep anything in my body. Only fruit juice sufficed and had to go out to collect wood in a nature preserve in the highlands of the Galapagos. Sweat did me good. So did fresh squeezed ¨fruitas de la passion . . .¨ We met beautiful ladies from Finland, Scotland, and Connecticut who were spending months volunteering at Hacienda Tranquilitas. Then we rode horses up to a lookout where we saw the entire island. Endless blue. Cities took up so little of the landscape. Riding in the back of the truck taxi and drawing murals on buildings for children to paint.

We went to teach at the school, but they were off for children´s week! hahahahah love it. Then we hiked the crater that once was a volcano and watched giant frigets swoop and shake down into the lake. Then came the tortoise center and then the Porto Chino beach where we arrived at sunset and swam in the soft sand and waves until twilight was done while pelicans dive bombed the water around us. We picked up Jan, a traveler from Poland who is doing research on Ecuadorian politics and teaching children computer science. After my first nourishment since breakfast, we stopped by a political party which consisted of a basketball court and hibachi grills on the perimeter. That didn´t last long, I was so tired.

Today rehearsal and tomorrow we swim with sharks and sea lions.

More on Quilotoa later! Not enough time! My camera broke. Wish I could send pictures.

J.