Galapagos Adventure

 I recently returned from a complete bucket list/dream vacation to the Galapagos islands and wanted to capture as much information as I can as well as share some of my favorite pictures.

A friend and I booked through Natural Habitat Adventures and while they were on the pricier side, they are the official travel partner of the World Wildlife Fund and had 2 naturalists for 16 total guests which is a great ratio (Galapagos mandates 1 naturalist per 16 guests).  

We flew into Quita via Houston and the trip there was fairly unremarkable except for the fact that the plane had an aborted landing in Quito - which is even more remarkable because the exact same thing happened to this friend and I when we went to Kenya 3 years ago.  Strange coincidence.

Plane going up when plane should be on ground

The immigration line was an insanely frustrating mess and by the time we got our hotel it was almost 2 am and I couldn't fall asleep.  Which was ok because the next day was a tour of Quito which I am sure was lovely but I remember very little of.  The day after that we flew to Galapagos!

i took this photo but don't remember it

Getting there kind of sucked because we flew a commercial airline (Avianca) that is kind of crappy and has a refueling stop in Guayaquil which then was delayed and it took almost 5 hours to get to the islands and then there was an island immigration snafu but we finally made it to our boat!

from the dinghy (also called a panga)

Spoiler alert, boat life didn't agree with my sleep.  The good news is that my stomach apparently has no issues with boats, waves, being tossed around like a ragdoll, or anything else.  This was a cruise based tour, obviously, you can visit the eastern islands land-based but this way the long haul moves are overnight so you have more time for adventures.  The Western itinerary, which i think i would have chosen if it had been available as there is more marine life, is only available if you live on board.  

Our eastern route

I don't think you can be disappointed in Galapagos though, no matter what route, islands, or stops you make.  It immediately delivers on beauty and diverse wildlife.  Our first stop had blue footed boobies - with mating dances!  -  Land iguanas, sea lions, red frigate birds, AH! It was just instantaneously amazing

Lots of people had asked what I was most looking forward to and I said I didn't have just one thing and while I am now even more obsessed with sea lions than ever, that was the right opinion.  It isn't one thing so much as how much wildlife is there and how crazy diverse the islands are.

The first sunset came through too

One thing that is super unique about Galapagos is that there are no (or almost no?) land mammals.  These islands were basically inhabited by things that could fly, swim, or float there.  The naturalists explain that tortoises and iguanas likely got washed offshore in hurricanes and floated out there.  Super cool.  

And of course, each island has become distinct with the Darwin finches being the most notable examples.  We saw quite a few of them but they are TINY and SPEEDY AF.  So I didn't get a ton of pictures of them.  

Do I remember which finch this is? I do not

Scientists are actually still studying them, which I want to read more about now.  

The currents wanted us all to know immediately that they weren't fucking around and the boat turbulence was terrible.  The sea sickness susceptible learned immediately that they could take dramamine with their scopalamine patches and I took a dramamine just to help sleep.  It was not a nice rocking, it was constantly changing directions and force so even with drugs there was much waking.  This never really improved, even in calmer waters my brain just couldn't get a rhythm and one night the seas were so rough I literally woke up by being thrown into the wall.  

Marine iguana chilling

The boat did have AC though, which I would have died without.  Heat, humidity, high dew point, nothing surprising about the weather but nothing which my body enjoys either.  Land excursions are either sunrise or just before sunset, with snorkeling and kayaking or resting breaks in the heat of the day.

Sea lions are abundant and have no real fear of people, and were at nearly every landing spot, kayak, and snorkel.  They are super curious and will come very close, they especially seemed to like when we snorkeled with them.  

A still from the GoPro knockoff I took, just swimming with me

One visit was just a beach filled with sea lions that we could wander for an hour and watch them sleep, play, and be generally entertaining

alive, i checked

nursing pup

kisses

snuggles

I wanted to take a sea puppy home

Boat life was pretty good besides the sleeping, the food was amazing, we got very lucky with our tour group in that everyone was nice.  I was worried about this since I am easily annoyed but it was a wonderful group.  The boat crew was wonderful and the guides were awesome.  I felt we really lucked out

i apparently took almost no food photos but here is a cake they made

The days were pretty long and filled, so much so that occasionally i skipped an activity just to rest.  One thing that was a bit tedious but unavoidable is the amount of logistics that go into each activity.  To get to land you need to put on hiking clothes, prepare for a wet vs dry landing, sunscreen, get your bag together, put on a life jacket, get in the dingy, then get off and adjust your items accordingly.  For wet landings you are cleaning sand off your feet to put hiking boots on, etc.  It is just a lot.  And for kayaking or snorkeling, still a bunch of logistics, just different ones.  

Example daily itinerary

The amount of sunscreen I used during this week was intense but no sun burn!  It all has to be reef safe (e.g. zinc) sunscreen so washing it off is a challenge.  Which reminds me, showers on choppy seas are very exciting and unpredictable! 

Nazca boobies!  Other boobies need love too

Red footed booby

the red footed boobies have baby blue beaks

Most days we were not getting a lot of real exercise in, walks are slow with lots of stops - more observational than much actual hiking.  Some of the kayaking was real work though and the snorkeling you could move around quite a bit.  But it was never ever boring.  

Fur seal hanging with a marine iguana

Waved albatross

The fish we could see while snorkeling are cool but as someone who has been lucky enough to snorkel the great barrier reef, the fish themselves were only regular cool not life changing cool.  I hear the western side has more fish but sadly part of the issue is that most of their coral has been killed due to el nino weather years.  There were still quite a few neat fish, some sea turtles, sea stars and star fish, and reef sharks.  

Fish

Baby blacktip reef shark

i could see this turtle well but it was a bit too deep for the camera

And of course, nearly every time, sea lions came to play.  Well probably to hunt fish too, whatever.  

At some point my skin had had absolutely enough and I got heat rash all over my face.  That was super fun and I learned that rubbing sunscreen into heat rash is both very painful and very difficult!  The salt water irritated it so I had to skip a couple snorkels, which was a bummer but we need skin on our faces.

Something that tickled me is that Galapagos has both penguins and flamingoes.  Where else has both?

Although the larger penguin colony is on the western islands, we still saw a few, including a juvenile.  

Also these are volcanic islands so in addition to white sand beaches there are some green, black and even red sand beaches

Overall it was a really amazing trip although kind of hard on my body.  I don't know if I would go back and do the Western route.  Maybe after perimenopause is done wreaking havoc on my body and I am more steady state.  But it warmed my science nerd heart in addition to my animal and scenery loving heart and I am so glad we went.

Thoughts on death

I know most people don't like to think about death.  I guess it makes sense logically, fear of the unknown and all that.  

So I acknowledge that I am weird (per usual) that it is actually one of my favorite topics.  But trying to figure out why I am so weird on this, I went into my memory machine to contemplate.

My mother was a bit of a religious nut and therefore I was raised in the Christian church and had to attend at least once a week, often more than that.  Meanwhile my dad proclaimed he was an atheist but we will come back to that later.  No wonder i am so fucked up though.

The Christian afterlife never really appealed to me.  Of course hell is unappealing, but I remember that even as a young child, I didn't like the heaven they kept trying to sell me on.  Maybe it is because it was a bunch of middle aged white men in rural PA and what they were really describing how they wanted heaven to be, and honestly I don't remember the scriptural passages but they repeatedly described roads made of gold and like.....I want to be in nature, what fucking use is gold in heaven anyways?  

not for me

They also kept telling me that animals didn't get to go to heaven so I was looking for where I could go that animals would be.  I explicitly remember one of these dudes reading me some passage about heaven having horse drawn chariots and I immediately interrupted and said WAIT THERE ARE HORSES IN HEAVEN? YOU SAID NO ANIMALS BUT IT MIGHT BE OK IF THEY HAVE HORSES and that might be the day my mother was asked to keep me quiet.

Beyond that, there was so much emphasis on this being eternity and I have always found eternity a terrifying concept.  I remember reading this and being permanently traumatized by it

Maybe it is because I was an abused child but I had nightmares after reading that.  I couldn't stop thinking about it.  How eternity means never ending and that it would mean nothing ever stops.  Ever.

Also I just learned that it appears to be a rip off of this:

Live and learn. 

Anyways, I didn't, and still don't, have any desire to exist for eternity.  I think anyone who does hasn't truly pondered what that means and how fucking punishing that would be. (Apologies if you have thought deeply about this and still want it, would love to chat with you).

Tolkien helped me further realize this.  When I read Lord of the Rings at first I wanted to be an elf.  Who doesn't right?  Then I read the Silmarillion.  And learned more about why death is considered the Gift of Men.  The elves have to watch what they love wear away and be destroyed and they can't get away.  Death is a gift. An escape.

As I moved into adulthood and left the church behind and talked to my dad more, I realized death could just be the end.  I don't have to believe in the Christian afterlife, what if when I die everything just ends? Stops? Goes back to stars, whatever.

His Dark Materials was a whole other awakening for me. Man books really do change your brain.

So I started to believe or I guess better to say hope that when I die, I just get to be done.  This is what appeals to me, this is what I want.  An end.  Life has never been overly kind and while I love the natural beauty of this planet with my whole heart I feel like I currently have to witness the destruction of beauty in favor of greed and an end to that sounds so appealing.  

But I get ahead of myself.  As I was shaping my own views on death and the afterlife, my father was aging.   He was 45 when I was born so he was always old compared to other dads and we missed out on so much time to muse on deep topics like life and death.  But we did in my late teens and early 20s and I think we were fairly like minded.  He talked about death like an old friend to greet when the time came.  I don't remember details but I remember that.  We agreed that even if Christianity or some other religion was right, maybe you can choose non-existence.  It can't be heaven if you there by force, right?

Unfortunately, age came for him in a cruel manner.  Both severe physical issues and a mental decline that was accelerated by medical professionals overprescribing him benzos which tanked him further in both aspectss.  

His decline was not pretty and his personality shifted a great deal.  He started fearing death.  I had to watch all of the changes and in his last year I literally witnessed him withering in front of me before finally passing.  

Death was a gift. 

Death is such a gift.

Losing him hurt me, of course it did, but it was also a relief.

It was over.  He didn't believe in an afterlife. He despised religion and although I think he leaned more agnostic than actually atheist, he certainly wasn't searching for Christian heaven. Hopefully he I were right and there is nothing after and he now is at peace because he doesn't exist.  

So here I am now, dealing with a bunch of medical issues that are currently not debilitating but that have the potential to decimate my health.  Knowing I have the genetic predisposition to go the same route as my father.  Balanced on the edge of the cliff, and unsure which things will fall.

My comfort is knowing that death is there.  If it becomes too much, I don't have to keep living in a failing body.  There is an escape. I like talking about it because it is my hope.

We aren't there yet, hopefully I am not even close to that and my musings are for a far off future.

But the comfort remains and when it happens, I plan to welcome it.

Nothing lasts forever

 It is so freaking annoying that basically everyone else is getting buried in endless snow and cold and that is literally all I want while CO is in this endless warm, windy, dry Groundhog's day that Just. Will. Not. Stop.

Even people who like warmer weather are sick of the wind and all of us are tired of the fires and fire danger.  I can't believe it has barely snowed at all and it has been 60+ so many days.  Whatever, my depression is never going to get better.  

The winter sunrises have stayed lovely though

I actually started with a new therapist because why the hell not and it has not been very promising so far.  This isn't surprising - I have been in quite a lot of therapy in my life and I  have worked my ass off to get my mental health in order.  Also I don't mean to disparage anyone but having done this enough I am pretty sure I am advanced level therapy but only the more junior people seem to have openings.

Regardless, she covered the basics as she should.  How is my diet? How is my exercise? How is my sleep? How are my social relationships? Etc.  But the thing is, I have all of that on lock.  I haven't had much choice as my health issues have continued to mount.  I can tell you lots of the most fiber rich foods since apparently I have to care about that now.  I am learning which foods are histamine triggering since now that is a problem I have.  I have weaponized workouts to the point where I don't know if my mental health could handle missing one, but fitness? Yeah I am good.

And I protect my sleep like it is the last bastion standing between me and death (it might be).

I have had bad reactions to 3 different SSRIs so those aren't an option and I am not sure I am in a place where I want to risk playing roulette with some new med.

So options, they are limited.  She basically admitted she doesn't know how much she can help me which honestly feels legit.  Who can fix the horrors we are forced to witness by our government every day? Who can fix the fact that we live in a society that includes people who not only execute these horrors but support them and want more?

I told her the lack of winter here feels like salt in the wound.  I had so been looking forward to it, and I can't even have that.  

Of course all my friends on the east coast are struggling with the ice, or actual feet of snow, or crazy wind chills so I guess no one can get what they want.

One thing we discussed that I did like was how the only constant is change.  Not revolutionary as a concept, and not that the change is necessarily good.  But that change will happen regardless.  And that there is value in the small joys and appreciating whatever good is happening right now.  It might not be able to affect the big picture, but it is here and now and might never be like that again.  Someone should take that moment to stop and think, This is good.  I guess apocalyptic mindfullness strikes again. 

The Things we Used to Love

I fell head over heels in love with horses at age 11.  I liked them before that, but I had very minimal exposure even though I lived in a rural place.  But when some horses moved in next to the parking lot at the gymnastics academy I attended....suffered at....that is when everything changed.

These old pictures are an ode to the (mostly lesson) horses who gave me the world.
Don't worry, I adored and appreciated them all.

I spent as much time as possible hanging out with them.  Luckily for uneducated me, these were very sweet, friendly, polite horses who would happily come over to socialize with someone showing up at their fence line.  I would hang out with them until I was dragged inside for torture, I mean gymnastics, and I would run back out to see them again as soon as I could get away.  My dad would have to force me to get in the car to go home.  

My father was no fool, he saw the writing on the very expensive wall.  Not to mention I was abjectly terrible at gymnastics.  Like.....the instructors coud not even believe a young girl was that unbendable.  If I couldn't do a split from the ages of 8-11 it was never going to happen.  But we were also quite poor.  Horses even then were not readily accessible to the poor and my dad was not excited to go down this road but he did it.  He found me a lesson barn where helmets, tack, and the lesson itself were included to squeeze it into our tiny budget.

Champy, the Chincoteague pony who I loved with my whole heart and who hated children. 

I won her over eventually and was there to say goodbye to her many years later.

I was allowed 1 lesson per week.  For 7 years, that was nearly all the riding time I got although I would do any other catch riding I could. It was everything to me.  As soon as we left the barn I would start counting down until my next lesson.  If my abusive mother wanted to punish me, she knew saying I couldn't ride that week was devastating.  Luckily, she enjoyed my absence more (my dad took me to every single lesson.  I later learned most of my barn friends thought my mother was dead). 

Tory an adorable Appy with great knees

Finally in college I had a car and enough money that I could pay for gas to drive myself to the barn, although not much else.  My trainer was doing a bit of horse flipping with auction horses at the time and she was happy for me to put as many hours as I could into her projects.  It was bliss.  I finally could spend as much time riding and caring for horses as I wanted.  I practically lived at the barn.  I honestly am not sure I have ever been as contented as I was that first summer when I didn't have classes and just woke up every day, went to the barn, stayed all day, and came home when it got dark.  It wasn't all riding, I mucked stalls, scrubbed buckets, fed, stacked hay bales, tended injuries, helped with lessons but I lived and breathed the barn.

As soon as I graduated college I got a  Real job and bought a house.  Right after that I bought a horse. Of course.

  

Apollo, the goodest good boy.

A cheap horse, one of the projects that came through the barn, but all mine.  He was one of the kindest and smartest horses I have known, and that is saying something.  Alas, he couldn't stay sound.  After several years, I eventually gave him to someone who just wanted a horse to hang with.  I went back to catch riding and at that point I was good enough to be in demand.  A few years after that, I took a bit of a break after some barn drama.

Jack, whom you literally couldn't miss a distance on.

But I couldn't stay away and once I got settled into CO, I took some lessons and got back into it.   Most of what happened after that is captured in this blog.  I got Fawkes, who was the physically soundest horse and the least mentally sound.  And the cutest fucking thing.  

That is when it started though.  I remember deciding to go to a yoga class instead of to the barn.  That had never happened before.  NOTHING came before going to the barn.  

My then boyfriend and I chalked it up to the difficulties of riding Fawkes and I eventually made the very heart wrenching decision to rehome him.

More Jack and me riding better

Things were better with Odin for a long time.  But I could still feel the passion dying off.  I was enjoying myself, but compared to younger me, the zest was absent.  Why? Why? Why?  Owning horses is hard.  Stressful.  Expensive. Several of my friends got very serious riding injuries in a short time.  You never seem to feel good enough or like you are doing enough.  Was that enough to explain it?

Bob who helped me learn to jump bigger

After Odin's colic I was done.  We hauled him to the emergency clinic and they were like, well we have another surgical case so you can wait and hope he makes it or haul him for another 3 hours to the other place that can operate.  We could barely keep him standing.  We waited.  Luckily they got to him and he was ok.  He had a mostly uncomplicated recovery.  I had a meltdown. 

Odin's new owner took him right after that.  I had been riding a lesson horse while he was recovering, another very good boy who just needed Big Girl Rides from time to time but he and I bonded so my trainer was like, ride him as much as you want, it makes him so happy. It was low key, low stress, no pressure and I thought I found the magic solution.  Chevy and I were meant to be and we had a great time.  But it didn't stop.  It felt like something core to what I was as a person was being stripped away and I couldn't do anything about it.  

So I stopped.  Entirely.  I figured (figure?) the desire will come back eventually.  But I really don't know.  So far I don't miss riding at all.  And I still go see Odin and Chevy and my barn friends and I still get those soft snoot kisses.  

Chevy, my little Red Fury

I went to therapy, they didn't have any answers for me.  

Sometimes I think it's the abused child thing - I needed horses to survive, escape, have an outlet, something pure.  Now I am definitely in a much better place foundationally but it isn't like I enjoy the world that much more as an adult.

Bowie,  I loved you so much. I am forever grateful for my time with you.

And while horses are the most devastating loss (emotionally, I cannot express enough how much better my finances are now), they aren't the only one.  I used to be an obsessive football fan.  Now I quite literally can't make myself care about a football and have an almost resentful opinion of it.  

Horses and football were 2 things that are irrevovably interlinked to my relationship with my Dad.  One by his choice and one he was dragged along for (look the man might not have wanted to learn, but by the end he could make the best hoof abscess poultice wrap in the lower 48 - thanks Apollo).  So maybe his loss ties into it too, he died in early 2019 but let's just say his decline meant the grieving process started long before that.   

She taught me what it felt like to fly.

Probably I will never really know.  But I will admit, I worry that my remaining passions are at risk.  It's also weird to miss loving something but not miss that thing itself.    There is a cognitive dissonance there I can't quite grasp.

One thing for sure though, I am endlessly beyond grateful for both that passion and the horses that were there for me when I needed them.  Even just looking at these older photos, I can still feel how deeply I loved these horses .  The lesson horses had hard lives at the barn where I rode as a kid, I hope I paid them back.   And I don't regret a single moment (or dollar).