By Greg

After speaking with several travel agents 8 months ago I quickly realized how much I did not know about the world, and some would say this translates into life. I thought I had traveled a fair amount and learned about life and listened to my surroundings, and I had! However these initial planning conversations made me realize my world was very narrow, but how could this be? I had been all over the US on business and personal travel, to Europe at least 5 times, hit every island in the Caribbean I could find (I just realized the Bahamas consist of 170 islands not just the Atlantis on Nassau:)). And then it hit me, the US and Europe have the same cultures and are both equally developed and the islands, well dirty bananas and Khalik beer can only teach you so much.

Travel with new eyes is what many books tell you, the way I see it (no pun intended) old eyes see new things because everything is new when you travel. As an example, on friday something as simple as being served my coca cola in the long skinny spiraling glass bottle was amusing. Now that is irony, everything is new but it is really an old bottle style that we all just probably forgot about.

All aboard! First stop Ecuador. I love me some chocolate, raise your hand if you knew chocolate grows on trees. Ecuador is one of the largest exporters of chocolate in the world. They don’t make the bars, they just pick the raw cacao bean off the trees, dump the beans into a canvas sacks and export by the pound.

We spent our first few nights in Guayaquil, outside of learning about the people, history and culture which are really our main interests the city is kind of boring but yet progressive. Who would have thought that a city in Ecuador would have a bike sharing program?  It is interesting how a country can be 20-30 years behind the US in fundamental things like education but have bike lanes and bike sharing which we are still struggling to adopt. Enough said so moving on, and no that was not a political statement.

Charles Darwin proved his theory of evolution, survival of the fittest/natural selection in the Galápagos Islands. We arrived here saturday and started hiking and sightseeing on the different islands. Six hundred miles west of Ecuador in the middle of the pacific I realized that even plants live or die by this theory, but how do they adjust and change without a brain? I think this is a profound question but then again I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. I knew we were in for a treat when before we even left the docks for the boat a baby sea lion was suckling on its mom no more than 1 foot from where we were standing. For the last two days we have been getting up early, hiking different islands, back to the ship for lunch then back out for some hiking and snorkeling. We are really just walking and observing the wildlife but everyone onboard seems to think we are taking on Mt.everest each day the way they are dressing. Imagine a bunch of wanna be hikers pampered to the hill with one to one crew ratios loading up every morning with hiking shoes, pants, jungle shirts, wide brimmed hats, walking sticks, loaded up backpacks and multiple cameras hanging from their neck all rushing the door at the same time like the wildlife that has been here for the last 400,000 years might decide to get up extra early today and take the trek west a few thousand miles to some new remote island. Well fortunately for all us extreme naturalists 🙂 the sea life, reptiles and birds were out in full force.

Yesterday riding back on a zodiac (small rubber boat) to the main ship one of the wanna be hikers asked our guide how long we “hiked” today, much to my surprise the guide said maybe a mile. I was shocked because I thought it was at least 1.1 or 1.2. All jokes aside for a few sentences, nowhere on earth can you interact with these species so naturally and closely, for two reasons 1) you can only go to the islands with a certified guide and things are very regulated which means the animals have never been harmed by humans so they aren’t scared and will just walk up to you. I swam up to a sea-lion today that was sunbathing on a rock and was staring at it eye to eye less than a foot away. 2) many if not most species only live in the Galápagos.

Time for siesta, pictures coming once we get back to the mainland in a few days.