Trip of a Lifetime: Galapagos Islands

Tomorrow marks the last week of school for me. We’ve been having final projects and assignments as school winds down. One of these assignments was a final oral in Spanish, taking about a past vacation. So, of course I had to talk about my trip to the Galapagos. A quick backstory. The end of sophomore year, my school announced they were going to be doing a school trip to the Galapagos Islands for interested students in February 2020. I'm not an adventurous person, but I've always wanted to see the Galapagos Islands. Visiting South America, in general, has been on my bucket list. Two of my aunts went to the Galapagos after college, so when they heard I had signed up, they hyped the up trip. Long story short, I got picked to go on the trip. This was back in June of 2019 (almost a full year ago), and it didn't really hit me how outside of my comfort zone I would be going. Not until I'm dropped off at the school to depart does it hit me that this is the first trip I've ever gone on without my parents. The plane rides all went smoothly and we arrived in Ecuador super late at night so we crashed the moment we got into our rooms. We spent a day in Ecuador before flying over to the islands. We stayed in Santiago for a few days before going to Isabela. We spent the last day back on Santiago before beginning our trek back to New York. When I say this was the trip of a lifetime, I'm saying that this was the trip of any lifetime. There are not enough words to describe how incredible this trip was. This one trip alone crossed off so many things on my bucket list. I learned how to make empanadas. I swam with sea lions and turtles. I was ankle deep in water with a baby shark. I planted a tree. I hiked up a volcano. I jumped off a rock and swam in clear blue water. I did it all. I'm not an adventurous person. I've said that earlier. But every time I was nervous about doing something, I asked myself if I would regret not doing it. The answer was most always yes. Soon, I didn't need to ask myself these things. I was diving head first into the action. We were in a foreign country, which meant that our bodies were not introduced to certain things. We were told not to drink the tap water and we were careful. But some things are just out of our control and a lot of us got really sick on the latter half of the trip. I was lucky; I didn't feel great, but I wasn't terribly sick. I stuck to plainer foods for a day and brushed my teeth with bottled water. Although I can't forget the sick memories, they're just overshadowed by the complete and utter joy of all the other moments. Of course, there are the obvious ones. The sea lion swimming underneath us. The first tortoises we saw (if you know, you know). The sinkhole. The ocean. The equator. But the ones that stick out the most couldn't have happened without the people who travelled with me. I remember our last night, sitting around outside playing a game of Anomia with a whole bunch of kids. Kids I haven't had many, or any, classes with. Most of us hadn’t played this game before, but soon we were splitting our sides laughing. It's sitting on top of a boat speeding through the water, scared you'll fall off but never feeling more free in your whole life. Looking to your left and seeing your friend take out his camera, capturing the beauty, and marvel at how he hasn't managed to drop it. It's visiting the baby tortoises and your friend leans too close and her sunglasses fall off into the enclosure. She gets them back and you laugh, but you know she's not really mad as she writes 'shame' on your hand. It's showing off the pictures of the first tortoises to the other group who didn't see them. Laughing about how those were the first animals you saw on the island. It's sitting next to the same teacher on every single flight, even though the plane tickets are supposedly random. It's eating the empanada you made and being impressed at how good it tastes. It's buying a shirt speaking only in Spanish and being proud of how much you know. It's balancing an egg on the equator and conquering your fear of physics. It's the greatest moment of 2020. One of the last great things to happen to you before the world shut down. This trip was an opportunity that, if asked two years prior, I would have probably declined. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity, to be able to do things I would never be able to do. To make new friends and new memories. To have something to look back on when the present seems too bleak. If you have an opportunity like this, take it. Even if you're nervous and scared and are unsure about a lot of things, you take it. Sometimes the unknowns lead to the greatest memories.