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Scuba Diving in the Galapagos
Entry 9 of 10 | show all | print this entry |
well i am down to one more week of "classes" and then i fly back to quito, spend the night, fly to peru, then fly to bolivia, spend the night in santa cruz, the spend the night on the plane flying to miami and then board my final plane to detroit. needless to say i am not excited about leaving because of all the flights back. then after a few days of being home i am flying to south korea to visit rob. next week just is not going to be any fun with so many airports, airport food and airplanes. so I am soaking up my last little bit of sun, speaking my last little bit of Spanish and eating my last few servings of bananas and rice.
my time here is flying by rather quickly. i have already been here for almost 3 weeks. i have been working for the national park and have had the luck to have the director of the national park as my mentor. so he made a schedule up for me to work in different areas of the park. its super cool when the time comes to switch jobs, because he just says something and everyone goes scattering to do what he says for me even though i am just a gringa. when i dont have work i just spend the day reading at a tiny little beach, swimming in the ocean and running. the beaches here are amazing because the water is so clear and there is hardly any people on them. the locals only go on the weekends so during the weekdays when i go it is just me and the marine iguanas sunning ourselves in the equatorial sun.
the first few days i worked in the turtle nursery where they keep giant land tortoises (or galapagos turtles, which the islands were named after). they have about 20 full grown turtles (they used to be pets of people on the island until it was turned into a national park) and hundreds of babies. the eggs are collected from nests on the various islands and then raised in the nursery to assure the survival rate of the species. each of the different islands has a different species of turtle which is one of the reasons that these islands are so special, that it is possible to see natural selection as darwin described right in front of your eyes. that was an easy job because i just chopped up plants and made huge salads for the babies.
then i worked in the office of tourism. this was definitely the worst job because i had to be locked inside an office with air conditioning just looking out at the sun and dreaming of the beach. there also wasnt much work to do because i couldnt answer phones too well, and they didnt feel like training me for just a few days of work. basically i just sat and learned how the office functions.
last week i worked for a few days at an even more beautiful beach picking up trash. this beach is prolly about a half a mile long or so and again there wasnt any human on it except for me. here there was actually even more iguanas, in total i prolly saw over 150 which was cool because they are the most crazy looking creatures. then i worked in a place where there are wild turtles in the wild just wandering around. the turtles are seriously huge, some are about 3 feet tall or so. they move super slow, especially in the vegetation and when you pass them they suck their heads into their shells and hiss. that is their only form of defense, but instead of being scary i find it comical. there i did my professional job of chopping down vegetation with a machete and painting and putting posts in the ground to mark trails.
last weekend i started courses to become a certified scuba diver. it was kind of a spur of the moment decision because i had the opportunity to join a class. i wanted to go diving anyway but for the cost of how many dives i get to do with my class its well worth the money. in addition when i finish i will be able to dive anywhere in the world. i thought diving would be easy, but the first day was actually difficult. instead of doing the first class in a pool as is recommended we did it in the ocean. this actually had its benefits though because it was possible to get used to the currents and biting fish. i inhaled a lot of water and almost went blind a few times when my instructor pulled my mask off (for practice he claims) but still managed to like it. we just did stupid skills and lots of what if situations. the course could take 4 days in a row only but instead i am doing it with another islander and we are only taking classes on the weekends.
so this past weekend i did 2 more days of classes that were actually fun. i am becoming more accustomed to the water and the heavy equipment. on sunday we actually went out to 2 different dive sites and did some super cool diving. we dove with sharks, turtles, manta rays, eagles rays and incredible amounts of fish. sometimes all i could see around me was fish creating walls and moving in large groups together. the water is semi warm and the sun was out so spending the surface time on a boat wasnt that miserable (minus the gasoline fumes being pumped out of the motors and the rocking of the sea).
this week i am working in the harbor, finding out information about the foreign sailboats. then i have 2 days to work on my paper. and that will finish up my classes. the weekend will consist of my last dive and my last day at the beach. its really amazing that i have been gone for almost 4 months now, but when i think back i realize i have done a lot of things in that time. i will see you all soon and hope the sun will be shinning in michigan when i return.
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