We woke up this morning to pouring rain. Which was alright, because we only had a couple of hours in San Cristobal with nothing planned, before heading to the airport. But it wasn’t as care free as it sounds. Transferring 15 people loaded down with camera gear (trying desperately to keep it dry), onto and off of zodiacs in the rolling waves was no easy job. And then there was the challenge of finding a place to hang out for a couple of hours before the bus showed up. We were supposed to walk around town, but no one had any adventure left in them to buck the pouring rain, even with only an iPhone in hand.

Traveling with 15 other photographers, on a small boat with 9 crew members was a very different experience, especially with the national park restrictions on when we could go ashore. All travelers to the Galapagos must be on their ships by 6:00 PM, and can’t go ashore until after 6:00 AM. And since we are a group that has, somewhere along the way, lost their sanity, we were up at 4:30 AM so we could eat breakfast and be on shore at 6:00 AM to catch “the good light”. The reverse was also true, we were out in the afternoon each day, and made it back to the ship just before 6:00 PM. The crew on the Grand Majestic was incredible, I don’t think they slept all week.

Each night we would sail to a new island. We had a few nights of rough seas, and as the ship sailed directly into the waves, it sounded like large boulders were being hurled at the hull. We would rock from side-to-side like a couple of frisky teenagers on a waterbed but without all the “business”.

And then there was the sound of the anchor. Humor me while I take a little detour through maritime math. I tortured our innocent unsuspecting captain, Pedro, on the bridge for this information just so I could share it with you. I hope you appreciate his sacrifice and the misery he must have endured while being interviewed by me for this post (it was made worse because I had to use Google Translate to ask my questions, and he responded by pulling out dense engineering binders and pointing). Our ship weighed 240 tons fully loaded (I would tack on another ton for all the food I ate this week). The anchor weighed 660 pounds, and was attached to a chain that looked like it was last used by Ghost Rider. This whole contraption gets dropped down over 100 meters. What goes down must come up. Now I’m getting to the part about how it relates to sleep. Imagine sleeping on top of this assembly as it’s being pulled back up (which takes two men to run the machinery). It sounds like machine gun fire in an oil drum, and toward the end add in the sounds and movement of a level 5.3 earth quake shaking the room. This happened at all hours during the night. No one told me. On my first night, at around 2:00 AM I thought I would have to be air ambulanced out for a heart attack.

Ok, so back to life on a small ship with 24 of your newest friends. You very quickly establish rhythms especially in the morning. Although it did take me almost 7 days to get our workshop leader, Richard Bernabe, to stop blasting me with rays of verbal sunshine first thing in the morning before my first cup of tea. I’m not sure I was entirely successful….if at all.

Speaking of rhythms, Peter and I got into the twice daily ritual of doing sink laundry. This was required because we spent at least 2 hours, twice-a-day, in the hot humid weather covered in enough sunscreen and bug repellant to stock the Outdoor section of Walmart. We made the strategic, and slightly questionable, decision to travel with only carry-on luggage for the last month. It seemed like multiple times during the day, we were changing into dry clothes, which meant we used 75% of the outfits we brought every day.

Washing was only one element of the clean clothes equation, however. The ship provided “dry only” service, which involved the housekeeper collecting all washed and still wet clothes from your room in the morning, doing some kind of magic and then hanging everyone’s clothes together on the banister near the common lounge area. At some point everyday you would find your delicates on full display to the rest of the boat as everyone walked by.

When Peter found out she was doing this without a clothes dryer he was incredulous. But he was on the case to unravel the secret mystery of how she dried the clothes in this oppressive humidity. He discovered that she would either place them in the engine room, or on the upper deck in the sun. I think Peter will be triple washing everything when we get home given the exhaust fumes our wet clothes absorbed. We will see what survives and doesn’t end up in tatters.

Now to a brief public service announcement. The bugs here are thick, pervasive, and fierce. Some mosquitos have an anesthetic in their stinger so they can bite you multiple times without you knowing it. You get patches of multiple bites that are so dense it looks like your skin is being consumed by some weird tropical disease. Did you know only female mosquitos bite? Blood provides them with protein to reproduce (yes, we are back to frisky business). Apparently even the smallest critters on earth have protein requirements. Oh, and according to my nutritionist friend Karil, two eggs in the morning does not constitute a high protein breakfast. You’re welcome.

I had one last cultural adventure, and it happened in all places, at the airport. I was one of the few lucky people on our flight who won the luggage lottery. I missed hearing my name over the PA, and CeCe had to get me and rush me over to the gate. Thank goodness, or maybe my luggage never would have made it. I walked down the tarmac to where they were loading luggage into carts for the plane, and was ushered into a side building. I was hoping I won a sporty Tumi hard case with four wheels, maybe in gold with my name engraved on the top? What I got, was some poor man going through every item in my damp, and stinky luggage…..without gloves. I learned that random, and very thorough, searches are part of the security process here. That helped me make another very important decision. I decided to leave my sneakers at the hotel in Guayaquil. I’m pretty sure they are a biohazard from all the poop I’ve stepped in, and they were soaking wet for over 5 hours after I slipped and stumbled into a puddle. I think the people 10 rows back on the airplane could smell my feet.

I also want to reiterate, that it was very hot and humid while we were here. Which is saying a lot for this gal, because I like it hot. Although, right now my skin is so soft with a dewy glow, I think I could be mistaken for 29 (or maybe the heat and dehydration has finally impacted my cognitive processing). If you decide to come to the Galapagos, bring a lot of sunscreen… and twice as much bug repellant.

For the last 8 days I’ve been trying to find the words as to why this place is so magical. I even asked Ibrehi, a trained marine biologist, to tell me why. Was it the fact that there are 4 different ocean currents that descend on this small archipelago in the middle of the Pacific? Or the fact that species that find their way here, can’t find a way out? Or the speed of evolution among species that depend on each other for survival? I’m not sure I can really tell you why this place is so unique, but I feel incredibly fortunate to be one of the lucky 290,000 people each year who got to visit this year. These are memories I will treasure for the rest of my life.