you're a leader!

Sunday, August 1st
Today I woke up at 5am to hop off the boat hours earlier than expected becuse I had to catch a 7:00am boat back to Santa Cruz in order to go diving tomorrow. I was willing to miss out on the last stop on the boat in order to have the opportunity to dive. When John, the guide, dropped me off on the mainland he hugged me goodbye and left me with 8 sincere and wise words "Erin...you're a nice person and a leader." I smiled and thanked him. The 2 hour boat taxi ride back to Santa Cruz from San Cristobal was rough but nowhere as bad as the original trip out there. Once I arrived on the island, I went to the dive shop and got fitted for my wetsuit and scuba gear. I was soooooo excited about the dive tomorrow. While I was in the shop, I learned that my snorkeling buddy, John, would be my diving buddy. I couldn't be any happier to see that since he was a certified dive master. Since John had hopped off the boat after the 4th day, I has no idea where he was or if he was gonna dive with me. So, you can imagine my excitement when I learned that he was gonna be my diving buddy. After, giving the dive shop my credentials it was time to try on the wetsuit. It took me a ridiculously long period of time to get that sucker up on my body. You could probably hear me outside the bathroom moaning and grunting when trying to pull that sucker up onto my body. The full gear consisted of a "farmer John" overall wetsuit, plus a shorty with long sleeves wetsuit, a hood, booties, fins, mask and snorkel. It all fit as planned and I was ready to rock tomorrow. The rest of the day was pretty mellow. I met up with John and Monica again and they told me all about their previous dives. John had been diving for the past three days and had seen all sorts of amazing things including hammerhead sharks. I was soooo jealous! The whole reason I wanted to dive galapagos was to see hammerhead sharks, whale sharks, and giant manta rays (the Galapagos is famous for these animals). I made some more friends along my way on the Galapagos and we all went out to dinner that night. It was John, Monica, Matt, Felix (from Germany) Pablo (from Spain), and myself. We went out for a great dinner and shared/compared storied of our adventures on the islands. Tomorrow, the real "adventure" would begin!