Salute

It's about that time to call the Galapagos yet another adventure in the books. I've taken a flight a couple days early to get home soon than expected. But at the same time I feel I came and conquered what needed to be done. I helped with as much GIS stuff as possible and locked in the Google workshop in Sept. It was a great experience and quite different from the norm. Between living/working in a forgein country and I admit there was quite the mental game of being constrained to an island, I have learned alot.

On top of that I was able to complete my Open Water Diver (OWD) certification that due to ear issues was up in the air. The doc helped out with that one but it was a great experience overall. It's an extremely odd feeling being somewhere that humans aren't supposed to be. On that note I'm going to describe my first and second dive...although three and four were 100% better than the first two.

My ears due to the pressure felt like someone first slapped by ears at the same time as a cruel joke then left their hands there and continued to push on my head...All the while my eyes feel like their getting sucked out of my head because of mask pressure that I should of been releasing more often...For that I burst the blood vessels above my eyes like I was out till 4am puking...This is on the way down by the way. So I'm down and now suddenly everything is fine, no pain, nothing just awesome stuff to see. But of course air doesn't last forever so we make our ascent and all of the above start to replay. I get to the surface and my nose is bleeding for the first time in my life...I can't hear anything including myself talk and the pain in my ears is accompanied by a hissing air sound shooting out of my hear at a pace that feels similar to a jet engine. This is what defined to me that the ocean is not a human environment and why we probably crawled out of it in the first place some 2 million years ago.

Dive three and four to Daphne and North Seymour Islands were great. Since I've never dove before my ears have never been through the hell of that much pressure before. But once was enough and my ears sharply adjusted. Diving is oddly awesome and you get to see soooo many things, maybe it was because I'm in the Galapagos but to see a variation throughout the world wouldn't be a bad thing to do.
After diving I wrapped up what needed to be done at work and started to do my last of things. I got my last seco de pollo at the place that knows thats all I order. I went and got my last empanada at the municipal market then went and got my final dessert at my favorite bakery.

As of now I'm sitting in Quito staring out my window at a massive mountain capped in white towers that this message is being sent through. I arrived here at about 3pm, got my room at the hotel, and quickly headed out on the town. I found an open art market with super sweet paintings that I'd love to hang up in my future house. I then wandered around eating street fruit and chocolate buns : ) but then headed to an artisian market. They sell literally the exsact same things as every shop in Santa Cruz does but about $10-15 dollars cheaper.

The plan now is to sleep get up at the crack of dawn for my Miami flight at 8:40am then off to Minneapolis after a massive layover. I CANNOT wait to see rach and eventually the roomies and fam.

I am singing OUTTTTTTTTTTTTT, salute Galapagos