Wednesday, November 7th
Galapagos, Island Santa Cruz
Stayed at Crossman Hostel

(Day 5 in the Galapagos)

Dear Obiwan,
My Jedi! Today was one of the more bizarre days of the Galapagos…

First, the woman at our awesome hostel just non-chalantly told us today that we have to split rooms, two and two, and then we are BEING KICKED OUT THE NEXT DAY. She said this with an expression-less face and didn’t apologize? I’m pretty sure Tamara had paid until MONDAY too. She said a family was coming and they had our whole room. We decided to deal with this later.

We were supposed to go on boat to Santa Fe today, but when we got to the office Carlos told Itay that he thinks we will be disappointed after going to El Pinzon, he said normally El Pinzon is last because it’s the best…so we took his advice and rented kayaks for a lot less money and headed out to Las Grietas de Las Tinoreras.

Andreas from the agency led the tour and he was an incredibly nice guy who made the trip so fun.

We decided to have Itay and Tamara in one kayak and then Ben and I in another kayak…as always, with my whole trip, this was WAY HARDER than we thought it would be. Also, I would paddle a lot and Ben would do nothing, same with Itay, I kept looking and he was just looking around and relaxing. It first was funny…but then Ben kept being a schmuck and saying assanying comments, and I was about to slap him with my paddle Obi until he SHUT UP. But we finally reached the first palce to snorkle. We arrived to sea turtles in the water and sea lions on the dock! Sadly it was very cloudy and the water was very murky and had poor visibility. We went for a walk to see some sharks, but we coudln’t see any. We then went back to our kayaks to go to the second place where we were going to snorkle. Due to our first experience, we switched up kayaks, now I was with Tamara and the boys were together, SO MUCH BETTER.

We kayaked around some beautiful lava rocks and we saw a bunch of IGUANAS and sea turtles as we were swimming!

We arrived to our second destination, there was a dock with two sea lions on it. Andreas told us that if we were VERY QUIET and swam, the sea lions would eventually get in! So in we went, and the water was so murkey you can’t see you own hands, BUT just like Andreas said, one of the sea lions went swimming after a little bit!

Below are some pictures Tamara took on her GoPro:

But as we were swimming with this sea lion who was slowly geting closer to us, and Andreas said she was pregnant, something was bubbling between Itay and Ben. They were swimming further from me and Tamara but they had some sort of disagreement and started SCREAMING at each other, all in hebrew of course. But, it was a long fight. They each both were yelling, Ben seemed way more angry and Itay seemed angry but more angry about Ben’s behaviors (this is what I got from not understanding them). We are all trying to get them to be quiet, especially Andreas, he’s telling them to stop for the animals. They ignored him and us and everyone. They were yelling so loudly…it seemed to me that it was about something more than the water?

Andreas was very upset, he said he felt embarrassed and never had experienced something like this before. We left as they were fighting since the sea lions were now not swimming with us.

They paddled super fast and didn’t wait for us. We get back to the dock and it’s just Itay and the kayak. No Ben. Itay explains Ben got close to the sea lion and tried to touch it, which is NOT ALLOWED. And Itay got nervous for his safety and me and Tamara’s safety and told Ben not to touch it and then Ben yelled at him and then that was the fight. All about touching the sea lion.

Later Ben and Itay talked…then I talked to Ben briefly and he said he was leaving us, switching hostels. Said he won’t go with us tomorrow to dive but will come with us to Bartolome Friday. He said he would still pay for his part of the food. He said he was fine and that all was good. And then left our hostel.

I then announce to Itay and Tamara the news, and me and Tamara are just bewildered and stressed. Itay told us it would be fine. Said they are such good friends that sometimes you just spent too much close time together. He wishes he could have just spent the last 5 days they had together here… together and wished he dealt with it better, but oh well.

We then had lunch with Andreas and all chose the ‘king burger’ which had a friend egg and bacon and cheese on it, it was amazing!

Later that day I went to go find the ATM I found earlier this week to pay for the hostel but it just…didn’t exist! And 45 minutes later, after finding one ATM out of service we gave up and went to get ice cream, and they closed early for some reason 😭😭😭.

We got some normal ice cream bars from a shop and went to bed at a new hostel that seemed amazing!

Goodnight Obi,
Love your Mama,
Carly

P.S.- here is me drinking my favorite cappuccino at ‘The Rock’ after our kayaking!