Farewell, Galapagos

Today we bid farewell to the Galapagos Islands. We rose early to begin our long day of travel. We took a bus ride to the Baltra airport, riding through the seven vegetation zones one last time. We then proceeded to the ferry. Our luggage was piled up on top of the ferry, not held down by anything. I thought it would fall off and we were prepared to catch it if it did!


Piling up the suitcases. Mine's the red one with the orange lock!!


Following the ferry ride (where our luggage didn't fall off) we took the public bus to the airport. This journey felt shorter than on the way, probably since we had already gone through these stages of travel.

As the plane ascended and I looked out the window, I couldn't help but to reflect on this journey. For the most part, the journey met my expectations. I was disappointed that we couldn't see the baby tortoises at the Charles Darwin Research Center and that we didn't go to the island with the flightless cormorants. When I was here before, I came during a different season and saw many, many more animals. I saw a variety of birds in greater numbers, larger sea lion colonies, and more bachelor sea lion colonies. Even so, coming in to this trip one of my main goals was to get wonderful photographs. I wanted to leave satisfied with my photographs. . . I feel like I accomplished that.


Flying over the Galapagos one last time. 



As we got to the hotel in Guayaquil and proceeded to sit by the pool to journal, I looked back on the friends I've made because of this class. Prior to leaving the States, I had arranged lunch with a few people, some of whom I've gotten extremely close to. Since we are all majoring in different subjects, we probably never would have met if we didn't take this class. I'm so thankful that I had this opportunity. It's one thing to learn about a subject in a textbook, but it's entirely different experiencing it firsthand.

This is the video I made about my time there. . . Make it full screen!



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCi8lc1-PXk&t=28s

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