Puerto Ayora, Ecuador, South America

I had a pretty disappointing morning, but a nice day overall. I woke up at 6am, I felt great, and was really excited to go diving! I went down to the dive shop at 6:50am, and the shop was closed. I can only assume that meant that the Colombians never showed up last night so I would have been the only one to dive this morning. I sat there for about 15 minutes, but no one ever came. I was SO disappointed! The one thing I was really excited about seeing in the Galapagos was hammerhead sharks, and I never got to see them. So unlucky.

I spent the morning just walking around town, I did my laundry, checked out some souvenir shops, I found a patch for my backpack, and chilled at the hostel. I got breakfast included at the hostel and it was really good. Eggs, croissants, jam, and a fruit smoothie. I’m going to miss having fresh fruit smoothies when I get back to the real world. They’re so good here, and cheap!

I was heading out to get some lunch and I ran into Rike and Joe on their way to Tortuga Bay. It’s a nice walk there and I didn’t have anything else planned for the afternoon, so I joined them for the walk. We stopped and got a couple of sets of snorkeling gear before we went, and then headed for the beach. It’s just too bad we didn’t really have a good day for the beach. The weather was cloudy and it even rained a bit while we were there. We never even used the snorkel gear.

We got to the beach and ran into a German guy who the girls had met on Isabela and we all ended up walking back together. I think we spent a total of twenty minutes on the beach after spending 45 minutes to walk down there and 45 minutes back. Not exactly our smartest plan, but no big deal.

We split up for a bit and then met back at the same place we’d had dinner last night, to eat there again tonight. The food really was excellent there, and Laura, Alyce and Harry even came by to join us. It was great to see them again, and it turns out they are all going diving/snorkeling tomorrow at North Seymour, so hopefully they will see some hammerheads that I did not get to see. We’re all heading in a similar direction toward Machu Picchu, so I’m hoping I’ll run into them all again at some point. They’re nice people, and definitely made my visit here to the Galapagos Islands a bit better.

I’m leaving in the morning and feeling bittersweet about it. I’ve had an unbelievable time here, and have seen some amazing things, but I’m also looking forward to seeing what else South America has to offer. This is definitely a place that I will come back to someday. I WILL swim with hammerhead sharks!