making friends with families and fish

i write this blog for family and anyone else interested. if you're like tara and don't want to read something really long, you're in luck; i'm going to post short highlights at the beginning so you don't have to read the whole thing!

Day Three
-The main breakfast course was half a hot dog
-We saw two hugeee sinkholes, called "The Twins"
-We went boating to an island to see seals and blue-footed boobies
-We made friends with two really cool Ecuadorian families in our group
-We went snorkeling and saw lots of cool fish, and I swam in the middle of a school of fish


after an impressively terrible breakfast, which consisted of too-sweet juice, a small slice of watermelon, two small rolls and half a hot dog (I have NO idea what they were thinking...), we drove to see "Los Gemelos" (The Twins), which are two huge sinkholes, one on either side of the road. We then continued to the north end of the island, where we boarded our boat and went to an island about an hour away. It was more like a giant rock with limited vegetation, but it had lots of birds, two American scientists living under a tarp studying the birds, lots of seals, crabs and a few blue-footed boobies. Still no sun, but it was pretty. We had lunch on the boat (surprisingly decent, all things considered; it even included salad!) and then we went swimming and snorkeling on a new beach. We apparently were supposed to bring our own snorkel gear but on of the families had extra goggles so they shared. I haven't swum with goggles in years, and it was SO COOL! In the water there was 20 feet ish of sand, and then there were rocks and lots of fish. There was a really cool flat fish that was either covered in sand or had the exact coloring of the sand, and it blended in perfectly with the bottom unless it was swimming, and even then it was hard to make out. We saw lots of black fish that were about 2.5 inches long, and one fish that was more like 4 inches swimming in the shallow part, so it was easy to follow. I also swam in a school of probably 100 little fish that seemed to have telepathic powers and would all turn at the exact same time. They were literally surrounding me so I could see them in every direction. We saw two worm-like bottom-dwellers, which were maybe 10 inches long, fat, and didn't really move but were cool. My favorite fish, which I glimpsed once, had a pink tail, blue head, and yellow strip.
On the beach there was also a tree with four or five huge birds and a nest with a baby. I didn't get too close because I didn't want to be attacked and have my eyes gouged out by their huge beaks, but I enjoyed watching from a distance.

Our group consisted of two Ecuadorian families from Guayaquil, one family from Virginia, and us four girls. The two Ecuadorian families were friends, and they pretty much adopted us for trip. In total there were 5 boys between the ages of 11 and 17, and they were all lots and lots of fun. One mom, Linda, reprimanded us for speaking English at lunch. She told us that we had to speak Spanish and her kids would speak English, so we could all practice. All the kids in Ecuador learn English in school if they go to a private school, and they might learn some or a lot in a public school. The oldest two kids were 15 and 17 and knew a lot more English than we know Spanish, although we do know a lot. It was really satisfying to be able to hang out and be friends with these Spanish-speaking families.
On our way home, the other three girls went with one of the families to watch a bull fight, but I didn't feel the need to watch animal cruelty so I headed back to the hotel, had the shower all to myself, and read some of the only English book in the hotel, which was a terrible romancey novel. I gave up on it after 100 pages.
The tap water on the island is not drinkable; I filled up my bottle as soon as we got there, steri-penned it, drank one sip and poured out the rest; it's essentially filtered salt water. They import all their drinking water and showers are an improvement over swimming in ocean water, but it's nice to be back in Quito with clean-feeling (if not completely drinkable) water.

The wi-fi at the hotel stopped working, but the hotel across the street had a really strong signal, so I popped into their lobby, asked for the password (a super sneaky 9876543210) and successfully obtained internet.