Day 4 - Plata Island

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Waking up in paradise is always an eventful morning. We were up and ready to go by our 7:30 pick-up time for a day of snorkeling and hiking. As it always happens to us when we are in a big tour, we were the first ones picked up by the bus, with many stops after picking up 10 other people. The last group to get picked up were at least 15 minutes late to board the bus, and then when they finally showed up they were four hot, skinny bitches and one old lady. It just gave us more reason to hate the last group. At least in the Galapagos, we were able to limit our excursions to a smaller group of under 16 people We are too old and just can’t handle the large group tours!

We made it to the port to board the dingy to take us to our yacht. Of course, the two people who were on the bus first, get stuck in the second boat to the yacht and the young, hot skinny bitches were in the first ferry to the boat and got the best spots! But, if you know us, we are not at all intimidated by these young, blonde hipsters. As soon as we got on the boat, we were up there in the front of the boat with our fat asses planting ourselves right in front of the millennials. Turns out though, they were super nice girls. They apologized first thing about being late to the shuttle. And then asked us where we were from and then, as we all now ladies, the conversations were on. They were from Cali, Texas, and Minnesota. They were very sweet girls and we shared lots of stories and many laughs on our day trip!

The boat was nice and big, and we started our trek to our first stop for snorkeling. Out of the 12 passengers, only 5 of us took the guide up on his recommendation to take the dingy up the coastline and snorkel back to the boat. Two German women, one of the skinny bitches and we all decided to hop in the boat and snorkel back.

What a great decision it was! The water is pretty cold and we were the only ones without wet suits, o’well! We launched ourselves into the cool, refreshing water and started snorkeling. We saw tons of different species of fish and a few sting rays! They were huge beasts just laying on the floor of the sea. The water swayed between warm and bearable to cold spots along the coast. We all alerted each other when we would see something cool and point it out. Along the way, Chester and the skinny bitch kept getting stinging sensations on their skin. Chester on her arms and the blonde from Cali on her legs. When we finally said something, our guide was like, oh yeah, those are little jelly fish stinging you. WTF? Mini jellies? Not cool Galapagos! At least Chester’s skin didn’t have a reaction to the stings when she got out of the water. The blonde, very fair-skinned girl had a bunch of welts from the stings that needed to be treated with vinegar. ☹ Kirsten was not effected at all.

So we were getting closer and closer to the boat and had entered the bay for the final part of snorkeling. We followed our guide, and all of a sudden he was pointing to a shark! In the bay, under a rock in a cave! It was so cool. We were all looking at the shark in total amazement and some fear, and as Kirsten inched closer to the 6 footer, a sea wolf, out of nowhere, darted in front of her and the rest of us. The shark made a quick get-a-way, and then we were all intrigued by the seawolf! A seawolf is similar to a sea lion, but we can’t remember the differences. Remember, by the time we write the blog, we will have consumed several drinks. Tonight it was passion fruit margs, mango margs, beer, and wine. So this sea-wolf was the most amazing creature. She darted back and forth between the five of us snorkeling with her. Our guide informed us how the females are super curious and really friendly. She swam around all of us, individually and as a group. She would swim straight onto to you and then dart to the side when she got really close. She even nibbled a little bit on Chester’s flippers! The entire time she swam with us, one could hear us screaming in delight as if we were all little girls at a slumber party. It was truly an amazing experience!!!

The guide struggled to get us in the boat when the time was up. The sea wolf swam and swam with us and we continued to be intrigued by her grace and beauty. Our guide finally corralled us in the boat and we were off to our next stop. An uninhabited island where we would find iguanas and hopefully, BOOBIES! We had about an hour ride to the island and we were accepted by the cool, young, hot skinny bitches at the front of the boat. They were really sweet girls, but we still hate them because not only were they cute and skinny, but nice, funny and great to talk to. We got to the island and this is where everyone got off for a hike! Now when we had snorkel time, only 5 people got out to participate, not we had everyone participating: 4 skinny bitches, 2 German women close to our age, a single Latin girl, an older German couple, and A REALLY OLD LADY. She had everything one needed for any adventure. She had her all-terrain cane, the half-zip pants, vest, jacket, hat, a huge backpack, and a big camera. This was not the trip one where one needs all that. That wasn’t even the issue. We know that this will be us one day. And, don’t get us wrong, it’s great that she is traveling and living life, but it was brutal to go at her pace on the island while we viewed iguanas, endemic birds and the blue-footed boobies!!! Brutal. The island was home to a bunch of iguanas, and tons of sea wolves!! They were a bunch of mamas and their babies all swimming and playing, or basking in the warm sun on the rocks. It was so cool! We continued to bond with the young girls and took tons of pictures. We even witnessed a male iguana try and get it on with a female. It was pretty crazy, and the chase and act played out right in front of us. Ah, mother nature!

The blue footed boobies are one of the endemic animals that the Galapagos are famous for. They were beautiful birds that would fly around and rest on the rock ledges. There were also plenty of sea gulls and many large pelicans swooping about. It was a hot afternoon and the sun continued to beat down. Kirsten would pay dearly for this later. She would also have to abandon her Keen sandals after the trek because the entire soul of one of her shoes completely came off not even half way into our hike. Total pain and majorly annoying. But they were over 10 years old and needed to go. We were finally able to make our way back to the dock, where many more sea wolves were playing or sunning themselves and it made for many pictures. After hiking back as a snail’s pace, we made it back to the boat for lunch and our trek back to the port.

Much to our chagrin, we are always the first ones to get picked up by the bus, and that makes us always the last ones to get off the shuttle at the end of the day. Ugh. We may ridicule the skinny bitches we come across, but it’s only because we are jealous. They were super sweet girls, and we had a great time getting to know them. Once our shuttle run was over, we had to head to the dive shop to get our gear ready for diving the next day. The dive shop is a short walk from out hotel and we took care of business quickly.

Not hungry at all for dinner, we decided to have a drink before heading back to our hotel. We found a place on main street that is right on the water and it was beautiful. And it was Happy Hour, even better. HH was buy 2 margs and get 1 free! Well, maybe we had a few of those specials, plus the left-over drinks that the bartender was making for others. We ended up having several drinks when we were only going for one. Our bartender was a nice young man from Venezuela and he made sure we were taken care of. We knew we couldn’t spend the entire night there and finally made it home to shower and head back out to dinner.

Because we did a package we have vouches for dinner at specific restaurants. We made it to our dinner place an had another 3-course meal. Lots of food that we couldn’t eat all of it. Everything from the shrimp soup app to the ultra-rich chocolate pudding for dessert was tasty and great. We finally pulled ourselves away from the table to walk home. For some reason though, both Kirsten and Chester kept kung-fu fighting all the way home. It was not pretty, and we had to stop several times because we were laughing so hard, we may have peed our pants a few times. We are not proud of this, but it happens.

Great day in the Galapagos! We are looking forward to tomorrow and another beautiful day in paradise!

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