There and Back...Full of Thanks

I will have to go through my pictures and be very judicious about which ones I actually post. I went way too far when I took everyone's advice to take a lot of pictures... For now, here is a quick run down of delights, surprises and moments from our Thanksgiving week:

• Landing on Baltra Island wondering why we flew so far to see what looked like our Mojave desert.
• Watching Bill dance when he almost stepped on a sea lion before getting on the boat to cross the canal to Santa Cruz Island.
• Iguanas that swim and sea lions that sleep on dock benches.
• Making more friends from Spain (The Canary Islands)
• Snorkeling with sharks, sea lions and sea turtles all within 150 meters of each other at Pinzón Island.
• Giant land turtles that look like a great ride
• Lava tunnels (and Will saying, "This brings back a lot of memories," as we descended into the first one
• Thanksgiving lunch (a day early) at the giant turtle ranch
• Biking from Santa Rosa to Puerto Ayora
• Finches that will land in your hand to eat bread off of it (not that we did this...)
• Impossibly large pelicans flying and beautiful white egrets fishing
• Iguanas sunning themselves on the path - it's hard to keep the rule to stay 10 feet away!
• Kayaking, sand castle / sand funeral home making and sea turtle spotting
• Ivy was the butterfly whisperer and Will was the shark summoner (and insect bait)
• Faith getting sunburned and us underestimating the power of the sun at the equator
• Eating on the street and feeling like we stepped onto an episode of Parts Unknown.
• Negotiating with people selling wares at La Plaza de la Independencia in Quito
• The kids practicing their Spanish...well, all of us practicing!

This was definitely not a relaxing vacation. It was kind of hard and totally worth it. Just getting there took 24 hours and then getting home took even longer. No throwing toilet paper down the toilet in Ecuador. Bathrooms were hard to come by. Hot showers were hard to come by. We all got sunburned. We got seasick on the boat to go snorkeling. No drinking the tap water in the Galapagos.

We saw and experienced incredible things that people only read/hear/see movies about. None of the wild animals are scared of humans, nor are any of them aggressive. People speak a beautiful and easy to understand Spanish in Ecuador. There isn't really crime on the islands. You get a totally different type of tourist in the Galapagos than you do in Las Vegas. The extraordinary is experienced every day.