LEGAL!!!

First off, it was so wonderful to hear from everyone over the last couple days. There are way too many of you to write back individually, but I know the majority of you check in here every so often– so thank so much for all of the birthday wishes!! I had a wonderful weekend, but we’ll get to that later.

There are a lot of little things that are different here. They’re the type of “details” that took a little while to notice, coming gradually to my attention after I got over the shock of sea lions more common than squirrels, hammerheads, iguanas, eagle rays and breathing underwater among the fishies and sharks. In the interest of shortening this novel, I will focus on two. The first was the stars. In Quito, there were no stars– too much light pollution. When the clouds cleared in Tiputini, Orion and the Pleiades shone into the clearing where our huts were located. On San Cristóbal, we still see Orion and the Pleiades every night. The big dipper is visible, as well as Cassiopeia. However, later into the night, the sky is dominated by the southern cross and Scorpio, which sprawls overhead (as opposed to the small portion visible on the horizon from the beach during Oregon summers). I am familiar with only half the sky– I can’t find the little dipper, the north star, the other familiar sparks of light that have guided me through the past 21 years. The other half of the sky is alien. There is no easy fix to this– I can find star charts of the Southern Hemisphere (which are 50% irrelevant) and of the Northern Hemisphere (which I don’t need anyway) but some genius along the way decided there was no reason why anyone would ever want to search Google Images for a chart of the Equatorial view. Because, you know, it’s not like anyone would EVER get the urge to travel to any of hundreds of spits of land in the middle of any ocean away from light pollution and actually feel a compulsion to know what they were LOOKING at all night long.

Number two on the list of Unfamiliar, Peculiar, and/or Outlandish is the houses. No, not just the houses– the buildings in general. I understand that cinderblocks are easy to produce and easy to stack on top of one another. But seriously, guys. You live on the EQUATOR. Your house is a constant, stagnant 90 ºF. EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT. You can’t sleep. I know you get headaches from the heat– you regale me with tales about them every morning. I walk in at 7:30 pm and start pouring sweat two seconds through the door. You’re unwilling to leave the door open to get a bit of a breeze during the evening due to the (nonexistent this far off the ground, hadn’t you noticed?) mosquitoes. You took away my fan and put it in your room: now you have two fans and a giant window and I sleep in a cinderblock cell. Plastered with magazine cuttings of Zac Efron, Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens, Avril Lavigne, and Taylor Swift. Speaking of which. If I hear another straight hour of Avril Lavigne and Brittany Spears during dinner, I WILL blow a fuse. You are a 30-something mother and her 12-year-old daughter: please please PLEASE stop discussing the exceptional quality of songs of which you understand neither the lyrics nor the insinuations. And, while we’re on the subject of food, I am perfectly capable of cooking my own eggs. If I have an 8:00 am dive on a Saturday morning, I do not expect you to get up and spend a half hour cooking food I could make and eat in five minutes. 1: You were sleeping. 2: You’re probably hungover. 3: I’m not incapable, and your waiting on me is awkward. 4: I know a lot better than you do how much salt I want on my eggs (none) and how much chocolate to dump into hot milk (a lot less). 5 (And I never, EVER thought I’d hear myself say this): I like cooking for myself. Moving on.

The rest of break was uneventful, as was the majority of last week. It was, however, a good week. On Monday I went snorkeling and found $20 wafting through the rocks. I’m taking an interesting class, looking at marine fauna of the Galápagos (except for my presentation on a marine species, which instead focused on the somewhat alien, sinister, penguin-devouring Leopard seal, which harbors an exclusive preference for Antarctic pack ice). We finally determined that diesel will not explode upon being touched by a lighter, is about 1/36 the price of kerosene (which is entirely unavailable on the island in the first place) and has a burn time at least twice as long, making it (despite the fumes) an entirely viable fuel for fire poi. So, several nights of fire spinning on the beach and the waterfront ensued. Thursday I went snorkeling and found an octopus. Friday a few of us swam over to the pier next to the university to practice free diving. Along with puffer fish, lobos and schools of surgeonfish, the school of baby golden cow rays decided to make an appearance. Thanks to a lack of 7mm neoprene swathing our bodies we were able to spend an hour diving among them, surrounded by circling and coalescing masses of baby rays.

Saturday was an even better day. Saturday was March 27th. Saturday I woke up late, courtesy of a few free tequila shots at right about midnight the night before, to go ambling through town (grabbing some cheese-covered fried plantains and fruit salad along the way), stopping to chat with several acquaintances, and eventually find myself at the university. A few friends and I went for a nice, long swim throughout the bay, weaving through boats and under catamarans and floating under the sun before returning to search out a late pizza dinner. We spent some time spinning fire before wandering up toward the bar to pass the night dancing, chatting up the weekend’s tourists, and downing a larger quantity of tequila than the previous night before heading home to crash… for an entire four hours.

Yesterday the class treated ourselves to a dive and snorkel at León Dormido, courtesy of three birthdays between the 27th and 29th. After the first group to dive took off, the rest of us jumped into the water to make our way into the channel. A few of us wore weight belts to facilitate free diving– although returning to the surface took a little more time, we were able to swim further down among the sharks and turtles and parrotfish and the occasional ray with less effort. Highlight: hammerhead. The dive was relatively uneventful: a few smaller sharks, some turtles, an octopus wedged into a crevice along the wall and a moray eel hiding among some larger rocks at the bottom of the channel. However, there were three of us left after the rest of the group had expended their air, so we got an extra 15 minutes to play among the schools of fish and the occasional turtle before making our way back up to the boat. After snorkeling once again in Manglesito, we fell asleep on top of the boat and headed home to finish up one of the Best Birthday Weekends Ever with a belated slice of chocolate cake.