Always Onward Adventures

Today was to be our most metropolitan day of the trip - spending the day in one of the few towns in the Galapagos - Puerto Ayora. We were to spend the day at the Charles Darwin research center learning how they are protecting/preserving the giant tortoises (primarily). Then we were to head to a coffee plantation and finally a protected tortoise feeding area to take pictures of tortoises. Lots of tortoises today!

We woke early this morning and headed out pre-breakfast for a photo expedition. It was a lovely morning except for the mosquitoes (which were an unfortunate trend all day). We saw lots of tracks from turtles coming ashore overnight to lay eggs. Amazingly, some of the tracks came ashore and did a loop without laying eggs, presumably to come back in later to find a better place. The tracks carpeted the beach, all from the night before - there must have been thousands of eggs under the sand…

What a day today was. As you can see, an orca came to say hi to our boat today - the facial expressions say it all… We kicked off the morning with a hike to see the tortoises! The hike was about a mile and a half in an area called Urbina bay. This area was underwater until 1954 when an earthquake caused a dramatic uplift and about a mile of new land popped out of the sea within sec/min.

Day three in the Galapagos saw more snorkeling, an excursion to see the marine iguanas, and a Zodiac trip along the cliffs in the rain(amung other things). It also saw my first “Galapagos Moment” which Angela/I have defined as moments where you see something truely amazing that feels unique to the Galapagos. Each day, we were provided with a sheet that showed the schedule for the day along with details about what we needed to bring. As I learned in the army, 90% of success is being in the right place at the right time with the right uniform. :)

This was our first full day on the boat. A couple of remarkable things about the Galapagos: 1. It’s hot. The heat dictated our schedule and we tended to have early morning excursions and late avernoon excursions to avoid the heat of the day. It also impacted the animals - each with their own different adaptation for how to keep cool - or keep their eggs cool in some cases. 2. The wildlife really doesn’t care that you are there. The Equadorian government has done an amazing job with the Galapagos - in dictating how people should interact with animals (6 foot rule for example) and in enforcing those rules with a naturalist required to accompany you any time you leave the beach/trailhead.

It’s been a while since my last post, but we haven’t been idle. Lost of skiing and boat work (in addition to real work) before our big trip to the Galapagos… Just scheduling the trip has been an adventure (credit to my mother), but 4 years later after countless reschedules, flight issues, and vaccine issues - we were on our way. Our trip began on Tuesday (4/4) with a 6a flight to Denver where we were to meet up with the grandparents for the continuation of the trip. We got to the airport extra early (which turned out to be unnecessary as the flight was delayed by over an hour), but we were all in good spirits - not realizing that the delay was an omen of things to come…

I’ve been skiing quite a bit with Sara this year - starting with a couple of days at Taos and then opening weekend at Snoqualmie and most weekends sense. This last weekend, Sara convinced me that we need to go camping more often so I decided on a double header - head up and ski on Saturday, followed by camping Saturday night, then lessons on Sunday morning and some more skiing Sunday afternoon. This was our first time van camping in a while (3-4 months I think) so there were some fresh learning pains - forgotten items, mistakes with parking, etc - but all in all a successful trip to kick-off the new year.

I had a grand plan of attempting the Palouse-to-Cascade trail, but plans fell through with some bike issues. Bit of a bummer, but we made the best of it! Our plan for the weekend was to leave on Friday night and grab a moorning ball at Blake island for the night, then spend the day playing around on Blake island before heading to Port orchard marina on Saturday night and head home on Sunday. It was our first 2 night trip in the new boat and the first night on a mooring ball (on the new boat). The trip was a great success - lots of fun and lots of learnings.