Friday, November 9th
Galapagos, Island Santa Cruz

Stayed at Darwin Hostel
(Day 7 at the Galapagos)

Dear Obiwan,
Today was such a whirlwind of emotions Jedi cat. The day ended with one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my trip yet.

But it started off with one of my favorite places I explored in the Galapagos- Bartolome Island. It was me, Tamara, Itay, and Ben. The guy who we made our deal with, Carlos, messed up the time AGAIN, and we were there at 6am as he told us…but the agency did not leave until 715. Also, he never got us our wet suits and we had to run around trying to find somewhere that was open and ended up having to pay out of pocket for our wet suits, but Carlos told us he would pay us back later today…

After this we were off to Bartolome!

After this we reached the island, it’s about an hour and 15 minutes away. Our tour guide was this extremely nice and excitable woman who showed us lava lizards and crickets and lava cacti on our way to the Mirador (view point). The big attraction at Bartolome is a penis shaped rock (they call it this, not my idea!). Look at the pictures!:

After this we all went snorkeling at two different spots by the penis rock.

OBI GUESS WHAT I SAW…PENGUINS!!! THERE WERE 2 PENGUINS HERE! I could not HANDLE myself. It was so exciting! They were Galapagos Penguins, which are one of the smallest penguins of the WORLD. They were so cute, one was chilling in his home, our tour guide told us he usually is here just basking in the sun, and he WAS! I got super close and he just let me stare at him. And then we saw another one as we were leaving.

When we were snorkeling we saw SEA TURTLES, sharks, and sea lions! The water was the clearest I’ve seen yet and it wasn’t too cold!

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The next thing that happened Obi was completely ridiculous. Remember Carlos? Our agency guy got us the best deals? Well, we kept checking for him at the agency and his shop was CLOSED. We needed our information for our last day at Gordon’s rocks tomorrow and he hadn’t told us, which was shady and abnormal.

In summary: Carlos was fired today for taking $3000 from a German couple (whom I met in Cocoa Valley in Colombia) for them to go on a cruise for $1500 each…but then never them seats! They also said this wasn’t the first time this happened.

We all realized that we were not getting our money back…$140 each! As we were all upset and huffing and puffing one of our new friends from Santa Cruz that works with Carlos, Jose, heroically jumped up and suggested we go knock on his door.

So Margaux, Itay, and I headed to his house! While Tamara stayed at the agency to help us there for back up. The first house his girlfriend told us they had a fight and she kicked him out. We then went to his second home and he was there!

In short- it was ugly, he was drunk, angry, stubborn, and horribly sexist, he wouldn’t even look at Margaux and I in the eyes most of the time, but, he seemed to like Itay. There was almost a fight between Carlos and Jose! And Margaux was so tough and amazing she just stood her ground and told the guy to give us our money back.

He kept trying to tell us that everything was worked out and demanding us to leave and telling us to just show up at the dive shop at 7am and it was all organized. BUT we asked Rene at the dive shop who told us Carlos hasn’t spoken to him.

It ended with me telling Tamara to get the cops…once the fight almost started. And the cops came with half of the agency workers. The cops we’re on our side 100% and so nice!

Everyone was trying to speak some sense into Carlos but there he was, yelling at all of us, saying that me and Margaux have to pay $100 more for our trip tomorrow for coming to his house (all B.S.).

The night ended with the cops saying he has 24 hours to pay us back and the agency saying they will give us our money back if we don’t get to Gordon’s Rocks tomorrow.

What a day Obi!

Time for bed,

Love you lamb,
Carly