Two Months of Freedom

---

Chilling on the Galapagos 2/13/07

Alright well I know it’s been a while since I’ve written something but I do have two reasons. First I haven’t done anything new and exciting lately and I don’t have internet. Nothing much has really happened. So here I am on the Galapagos slipping into that daily routine. I’ve been doing a lot more reading then I have ever done in my life and well I actually like. I can actually read pretty well in Spanish and I have about four books that I’m reading and I switch between them often. Then I have an English book that I’m reading to. The one I’m on now is about a father and son that canoed from Canada all the way to the Amazon something like 12,000 miles!! It’s a pretty exciting book! A friend also sent me Into Thin Air witch I read in about four days… it was GOOD! The only things that have changed here is that it is summer vacation and for the last three weeks I’ve been painting in the mornings and teaching English at night. It’s been keeping me pretty busy. Plus getting up early to go running… I’m trying to get my form back. I use to be pretty fast when I was in high school and now I’m slow as a turtle!! I’ll get it though!! I’ve made a few trips to Las Grietas to do some cliff jumping which is always pretty exciting to do! It takes an ordinary day and turns it into something exciting. Also I climbed Puntudo again. Although this time I loaded my back with about 40-50lbs of water and hiked from my house to the summit! Round trip it turned out to be eighteen miles. I did that to practice for Cotopaxi.

Another thing that I’ve gotten into is playing indo every Saturday night! It is pretty fun!! It is a game like soccer but the ball is smaller and the field is a little smaller then a basketball court. Also the ball is a bit heavier and doesn’t bounce like a soccer ball! Anyway I love playing!! So far I’ve been playing really good for never having played in my life. So far I’ve made six goals in the only two times that I have gone!! I will admit that I don’t have much foot skills with the ball but the thing that makes me good is I can run and run and run and I don’t tire as fast as the others!! But yeah it is a super sweet game and I’ve already decided that I am going to miss playing indo when I am back in the states. I’ve also been playing a fair amount of ping pong against Jefferson who is about the same age as me and is selling books around the island to get some money for school next year. So that has been fun but I normally do get my butt whooped when I’m playing ping pong.

Okay well that is just about all! Tomorrow I’m going to Quito so when I return I will have many stories to tell! I’m still looking at doing Cotopaxi hopefully the weather and the snow conditions will work out for me. I might be able to do some more climbing then that too! I’m looking forward to seeing snow and having a climate that is a little cooler.

---

Photos

Hiking up to Puntudo
This time we did it from our house to the summit. In total we walked 18 miles

Surfers
An afternoon at the beach