Last week we had the once in a lifetime opportunity to experience the famous Galapagos Islands! The fact that this trip was included in the program was one of the most attractive features of the Semester in the Andes for me, and it completely lived up to my expectations. Here’s a rundown of the good, the bad, and the ugly of my trip.

I’ll start with the good. I was able to get past most of my apprehension about animals! I wouldn’t say that I’m actually scared of animals, I LOVE dogs and cats, but beyond that other animals just make me a bit nervous. I wasn’t sure how this would play out in the Galapagos considering animals are abundant and because they are protected, the animals don’t try to hide from humans. The first few times I saw marine iguanas I was convinced that they were going to attack me or something, but even by our second day there I was able to appreciate their presence with little to no fear.

The way we were able to see the most animals up close was when we were snorkeling. We went snorkeling three times during our time there (in three different places, so there were different things to see). The first day we went, we saw sea turtles that came VERY close to us. They were just swimming around us as if we weren’t there. That really was the magical part of the Islands- there’s no other place on earth where animals are quite so comfortable being around humans, so it gives us the rare opportunity to see these animals up close in their natural habitat.

On the final day of snorkeling, we swam with sea lions! Before getting in the water, our guide told us that sea lions, much like puppies, are really playful, and to not worry if they’re coming up really close to us. He was not wrong! It was absolutely phenomenal to see the sea lions zipping around in the water so close to us. One of them repeatedly swam quickly towards me and then turned away at the last second before ramming into me. It was an amazing experience!

Now for the bad. Honestly, I know I implied that I’d have something to say here, but there was nothing bad about the Galapagos Islands. The only thing I can think of is that I didn’t always have Wi-Fi or service. In my mind, that is not a legitimate complaint AT ALL. We were out experiencing amazing things, so not being able to use my phone a lot was a very minor inconvenience at worst. I feel ridiculous even mentioning this as a “bad” aspect, but I feel like I have to put something in this category!

And now for the ugly… this had nothing to do with the place itself, but I was sick with what I believe was the flu throughout our time in the Galapagos. I still participated in everything we had planned, but I was feeling terrible a lot of the week. On the bright side, it was interesting to experience a public hospital there. Not a lot of people can say they’ve been to a hospital in the Galapagos Islands… so now I have a unique story to tell! (I’m partially kidding, but it’s good to look at the silver lining!)

The day that I woke up feeling the worst, also happened to be the day we were going on a 10 mile hike. I pushed myself extremely hard that day because I didn’t want to miss out on anything we were doing. There have been few times in my life that I felt more physically sick than during that hike, but the other people in our group were unbelievably kind to me. During our lunch break, people were offering me everything from a wet wash cloth to cool off to their juice boxes we were given. And despite my being sick, I was so happy I was able to complete the hike and see the amazing views from Volcan Sierra Negra!

It’s impossible to summarize my whole week in the Galapagos into one blog post, but the bottom line is that it was an incredible opportunity, and despite being sick, it was still an overwhelmingly positive experience for me!