And so, the dreaded 5am alarm rang and I begrudgingly got up and packed my final items for the boat. We dropped our bags into the back of a pickup truck, then got in our own fancy truck to head to the pier. We got there first, then the luggage truck arrived with Olivia and our other member who was all better from being at the hospital. Finally, our group was all together again and set to head to the next island. Many of our group members got a rude taste of what the pacific can do to one's stomach, so I offered some gravol out to about half of them. We were taken to a similar boat as before and all found our seats inside. Within a matter of minutes, everyone was passed out in a gravol induced coma. I'd find it pretty amusing, but I was passed out too. The boat ride was a lot smoother than last time, so we made some pretty good time to Santa Cruz. Everyone woke up at our destination and got off half awake, happy that the trip went by in the blink of an eye. We walked a couple blocks to the hotel and immediately sat down for breakfast. Everyone were zombies at the table, suffering from the gravol hangover. I was officially the drug dealer of the group and my master plan was to drug everyone, then make off with their luggage. Lol. We had a bit of down time, which I used to explore some of the town with a few of them. We went to a bank where I withdrew what I assume would be my last in American dollars. With only a few days left now, i want to enjoy it. The stupid thing about Ecuador though is that all the ATMs give you $20 bills, however nobody in the whole town has any change to give you. Hence, we all went into the bank and literally cleaned them out of small change. We carried on, checking out tourist shop after tourist shop until finally deciding to go back and chill out for a bit (hopefully getting over the gravol). It wasn't much longer before we were on our next adventure. Firstly, we had to get fitted for masks, fins and wetsuits as tomorrow we would be going snorkelling again. Then we were taken to a little seaside restaurant for lunch. There was a fish cleaning station right across the street from us (covered in hungry pelicans) and we literally had yellowfin tuna that had been cleaned and delivered from right across the street - you can't get it much fresher. For dessert, right beside us there was fresh ice cream waiting. I had cookies n cream, and mocha which was just like an ice cap. The next activity would take up the whole day. We had all of our things and we were going to a famous beach here called tortuga bay. In order to get there, we needed to walk a 45 minute trail through a hilly range. No cars are able to get there (not that there are many cars here in the Galapagos), so the whole way was completely natural. When we arrived, the view of the bay was incredible. Beautiful blue water crashing upon another white sand beach that felt like flour between your toes. Although we couldn't swim in this section because the waves were too intense, I still went in up to my waist to feel the ocean. Most of the group set up camp to lounge away the afternoon in the sun, but a couple of them were going to go walk the rest of the beach, so I decided to join (I'd much rather be doing something on the beach than sitting around). We walked all the way to the edge of the beach, which turned into the entrance to the rest of the park. Funnily enough, this entrance was "blocked" by a row of marine iguanas, basking in the sun. We took pictures with them, copying some of their poses. Carrying on, we found a second bay around the corner which was flat calm. It was the swimming bay but it was hard to believe that it was ocean! It looked more like lake Okanogan. The water was nice there, but after a little bit of time, we continued to explore some of the trails here. In between trails, we ran into a guy that we keep seeing here along the way (he may or may not be stalking us). He let us know about a different trail that had a ton of iguanas. Since we didn't have our flip flops along, we walked back to home base to pick our stuff up. The whole group came with us this time, but we quickly divided again due to our different walking speeds. By the end, I was walking with the original two others and we went to check out the trail. On the way, we ran into Olivia and she pointed out turtles poking their heads out of the bay every so often. Hopefully we'll see more close up later on. The trail winded along the coast, bordered by lava rocks. Half way through, after taking a bunch of photos, we came across the mothership of iguanas. Tons of them were just hanging out, spitting salt water from their nostrils. After this, all of our many iguana picks seemed inferior. The trail soon turned into a cactus forest, with hundreds of these cactus trees that seemed almost fake - like illustrated in a story book. We walked along a raised lava rock coast, surrounded by cacti, in disbelief of this amazing place. By quarter to five, we were worn out and walking back to the hotel to shower off and get ready for dinner. This dinner was one of the biggest meals I had paid for, but I only had a few days left so I don't mind splurging on myself. I had lobster ravioli and chocolate cake for dessert (we were in a place that specialized in desserts). We ended off the night all together, hanging at a local bar. I had a beer and the bar also gave us this complimentary slush drink in a shot glass. It was confusing but good. Tomorrow we would be doing a day trip to another island, and it would be the last full day here in the galapagos!
Hugging a cactus
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