Sleeping Lions and Sea Wolves

We never make plans on this island, because inevitably something else will come up. Most often this involves planning to meet up with someone at 5, going for a swim at 3, and returning from a jaunt through the bay and among the boats to realize that 5:30 has already come and gone. Allowing 20 minutes to amble to the university is stupid: stopping to chat with acquaintances every block is inevitable. It will take an hour and a half. And at times, other big grand plans decide to make themselves known, such as when my slightly crazy dear friend Kelly pranced into the common room in the university at 2:00 pm on Monday afternoon with an unanticipated “Hey Gavi! Wanna go snorkel at León Dormido this afternoon?” Are you kidding? Do I ever. “How much does it cost?” “Nothing! My parents are going and there’s room on the boat!” Like I said: Plans change. The research paper can wait.

We clamber onto the boat around an hour and a half later, courtesy of Kelly’s failure to hear the last two words in her father’s sentence “The plane just arrived in Isabela.” They still had to get to San Cristóbal; luckily it was a short and sweet 40-minute flight. When we reach León Dormido, we are the seven of us and our guide are only people there. The sun hits the rock a perfect angle, bathing the eastern side in late afternoon light and shining directly into the split, illuminating the water of the channel. We jump into the water, some of us wearing weight belts for free diving. At first, the snorkel is relatively uneventful: a turtle, giant ever-present schools of Pacific Creolfish, some hogfish and parrotfish… and then the rays come. The largest school of spotted eagle rays we’ve seen glides into the channel, so close to the surface that a fin occasionally breaks into the air. They remain congregated in the channel, making their way to the walls to feed on organisms living among the coral and sponges, accumulating tails of parrotfish and other scavengers who snatch up particles dropping from the their mouths as they make their way back to the middle of the channel. They pay us absolutely no attention as we dive down below them and make our way back up, coming within a few inches of the animals as we find our way back to the surface for air. An occasional of Black-tipped Shark makes its way through the channel below us. As we make our way back to the boat just outside the channel, the sun significantly lower than when we entered the water, we find more sharks, both Galápagos and Black-tipped, swimming closer to the surface, beginning to circle among the creolefish. We dive among them until an individual decides to start stalking another member of our group, at which point we decide returning to the boat might constitute the best course of action.

On the way back to town, we break out ice-cold beers and make a stop at Isla Lobos to hop into the shallow water and swim past some resting stingrays and turtles toward shore, where five baby lobos decide we constitute the best form of entertainment at present. For a half hour under the setting sun, we twist around each other and blow bubbles in each others faces, humans laughing as we play in the clear, warm water. Yep, this is the life.

And then the sun is gone, and Passover is come. Passover: how I love thee, when I am not in the Galápagos. Restaurant owners do not know what to give me, despite my program director’s previous phone calls detailing exactly what I would be able to eat, because taking notes to remind themselves would be… well, not how they do things here. So I show up and they’re reminded that there’s a weird foreign chick that doesn’t eat rice or beans or pasta and they give me soggy fries with some shredded cabbage and carrots and maybe some avocado. If I’m lucky, they’re serving chicken or fish and I get some of that too. My host parents have resorted to fried bananas and eggs… such is my life until Tuesday evening. Shay, a dive guide and the Other Jew on the Island, got around to sharing his wealth of Matzo with me yesterday; I now have a source of carbs! Go me.

Class has been bearable this week, since only half of our periods were spent in hot, stuffy classrooms. The other half we spent conducting fish, urchin, and turtle transects in a small bay off a beach called La Loberia. I managed to distract myself with tiger eels and octopi. Did I mention this place is awesome? Also, we’re taking off for a couple weeks. That means no internet… so I’ll talk to y’all after the break.