Day 19! Santa Cruz

 Hello to our valued readers,

    This morning Alex, Ella, Dacey, and Kendall started off their day strong with a breakfast of champions at the local gelato bar where they got an assortment of avocado sandwiches, pancakes, toast, and scrambled eggs. They hurried back to grab their bagged lunches. Then we all headed up to the highlands to see how coffee and moonshine were made at El Trapiche before the island had power. We also learned that when Covid hit the island the local communities bought all of their stock of moonshine to cure a host of ailments since there were no boats or planes coming to the islands. While there, we watched Dylan do the work of a donkey and juice a sugar cane plant by turning a giant log in a circle, we also watched tanush show off his muscles by pounding a wooden pestle into a wooden mortar in order to separate the shell from the coffee beans itself. After taste testing there homemade sugar, coffee beans, coffee and a coffee chocolate sugar mix that you put in milk, we bought our goodies and then headed down the windy road to the beach! After a long drive where every large sized lava rock looked like a Galapagos tortoise we made it to El Garrapatero. Everyone piled off of the bus and made the 15 minute trek to the beach along the way we listened to our guide tell us about the poison apple tree, we saw a mockingbird who just wouldn’t sing, and enough lizards to make any lizard lady happy. We finally had made it onto the beach but before we off loaded our towels and sandwiches we followed our guide to a brackish water pond where we got to see the famous Galapagos flamingos! Who I learned were much smaller then there Caribbean counterparts. We then finally headed to the beach where we wasted only the necessary time needed to apply sunscreen before we dove into the waves, with Dylan taking that literally. We also built the most epic sand castle you will never see as sadly none of us thought to take a picture but take my word for it, it was AWESOME!!! We also attempted to do cheer stunts with Dacey and might have had her drinking most of the water in the ocean. Sorry Dacey… On our way home from the beach we saw not 1 but 5 Galapagos tortoises on the side of the road! We then continued back for a hotel break where I met this very wonderful girl from Spain named Claudia who was telling us all the best places to visit while we were still here. Then a few of us went to do some shopping before dinner. We ate dinner at The Rock which was inspired by the first Galapagos bar of the U.S. Military base of the Second World War. Then after a quick grocery store shop, to get our ailing Ella some food, we stopped at the gelato bar and headed home for a good night’s rest before heading out and surveying tomorrow. 

All the best Kendall BettyAnn Filer