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My first view of the Galapagos water. I was amazed at the colors and the
blue sky. The picture doesn't do it justice.
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From the airport, you take a free bus to the ferry terminal, you take
this ferry across the water ($.70), then take another bus to Puerto Ayora ($1.80).
It's quite and ordeal if you miss the first bus.
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View from the ferry boat.
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My first sighting of Galapagos animals! I went to a police station, and
they were all playing volleyball while I checked out the view and the
cool marine iguanas. They are not as menacing as they look.
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At first, I thought they were just rocks or something, since they
usually stay pretty still, sunning themselves.
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Then they move and it is like "WOW"! It's really fun to watch them
squirt salt water out of their noses.
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View of Academy bay. Tons of boats everywhere.
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Just couldn't get enough of them!
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Even more...
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Upclose is also fun too! Glad to have that zoom!
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One more, just in case you're not sick of them yet.
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I was camera crazy since there were just animals everywhere. I
had to take a picture of this bird on the boat.
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This is the main drag of Puerto Ayora, Charles Darwin Avenue. I walked up and
down this street countless times!
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Another view of Charles Darwin Avenue.
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Here is the Galapagos version of the Pike Place Market. I loved the
birds just waiting for the leftovers.
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All those large pelicans!
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What's weird is that I only saw this fish market the first day I got
here. Every other time, this place was vacant.
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You can get real close to the birds, they have their minds on only
one thing.
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More pelicans...
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More pelicans...
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More pelicans...
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I think this is Charles Darwin Avenue, on the way to the Research Center.
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My first turtle sighting, although it is in the Research Center. I didn't
know that I wasn't supposed to take flash photography.
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I hope I didn't upset her...
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The next morning, I had to get up at some ungodly hour and went with
my family's father, Antonio, to Bartolome island. Here is a guy pulling
up the anchor and I believe those are diving boobies in the background.
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Diving boobies are the coolest thing to watch!
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This is the one and only penguin that I saw. I got about a foot away from him!
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It was really cool to be so close!
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I wish he would jump in with me!
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My first underwater picture. There were tons of these small fish!
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The fish are a little hard to see, but you can just make them out.
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This is a better picture.
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There were also a billion of these urchins.
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I swam around the famous rock and found 4 seals resting. It was my
first seal sighting!!! I was so excited! No one else from the boat
ventured out this far, so it was truly a magical moment!
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This one was playing hide and seek with me, it was so much fun!
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He would go under the rocks and hide, then would come out 5 seconds later
to see if I was still looking for him.
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Once he hid really well and came up behind me!
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It was so much fun!
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I wish there were more around to play with!
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A lonely marine iguana taking a sun bath.
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This is Jose, the youngest child of the family that I stayed with.
He is 10, and quite the character!
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This is Cesar, the middle child. He is 16, and a really sweet kid!
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Here are all the kids! (L - R) Me, Maya (19), Jennifer (19),
Nubia (19), Cesar (16), Olga (mi profesora de espaņol), Daisha (24),
Jose (10).
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Of course, I loved their cat, Bagheera. He was named after the panther in
"Jungle Book". He was a really sweet cat, almost as sweet as my Samwise!
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Digna, the mother, is a legal secretary, and Antonio, the father, is
a capitain of a tourist boat.
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Olga, on the left is my spanish teacher and she is playing scrabble in
spanish with Nubia, who is a friend visiting from Guayaquil. She goes
to college with Jennifer, the daughter of Digna and Antonio.
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This is Daisha. She is a medical student from South Dakota. We spent many
hours hanging out and talking about life. She always has this great smile on
her face and I will always remember her cheerful laugh!
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Well, maybe not always!
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Digna and Jose playing with Hunter, their dog.
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Jose with Tao and Bagheera.
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Cesar showing off his pack of Oreos. Maya, Daisha and I craved them
soooooo badly.
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Maya, Cesar, Daisha
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Daisha is 5'10" and it shows in this picture.
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Me and Cesar.
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Maya and Daisha drinking the awesome Caipiriņas! We drank a lot of those...
for $2.50, you can get a bunch of them. And teachers get 2 for 1!!!
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Maya and Daisha with Rachel (pronounced Rachelle). Rachel was a
really nice girl from
Winnipeg, Canada and she knew everything about everybody. She is also an
English teacher there and she's in the islands for 1 year.
Since she's a little closer to my age, we bonded instantly! :)
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Daisha, getting a little tipsy by now. Some weird guy was giving her
lessons on how to play.
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Daisha and I went out to Tortuga bay one day after classes. It was a really
pretty beach, and reminded me a lot of Kailua Beach in Hawaii.
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Daisha comes here all the time.
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At the beach, I spotted my first Land Iguana.
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He didn't let me get too close to him.
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That little black blob is the best picture I could get of a
baby Spotted Eagle Ray. It was really cool! I waded into the water
about thigh high and I saw 5 baby rays at once all swimming around!
Because the water was so murky, I couldn't get any underwater pics.
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Pelican on the beach.
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Pelican on the beach.
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Olga is my spanish teacher in the Galapagos. She lives in Quito and
travels to the Islands whenever a student wants to take Spanish.
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Jennifer cooking dinner for us.
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This is the next door neighbor's dog. Cute, yes, bad, yes!
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My classroom in the Galapagos was the next door neighbor's patio. Not the
best place to learn, but it was ok.
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Bagheera, the family cat.
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This is a view of Academy Bay.
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Maya, Jennifer, Nubia and I went snorkeling near the sea lion colony.
It was pretty fun, but the sea lions weren't as friendly as I expected.
Here is Maya posing for the camera.
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Here are a couple of sea lions playing nearby.
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They get really close too!
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Here I am, warm in my wetsuit! The water there is quite chilly! Maya
and I had a really hard time getting this picture...
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I convinced Maya, Daisha and Jose to come and ride the weird bus that
goes all around town on the weekends. We found out that it is called
a Gusanito and it is quite common in Ecuador parks. I found a bunch of
them in Quito too!
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Here we all are with a self portrait!
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This is what the body looks like.
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This is one of our main hangouts. I used the internet service here because
it was almost always fast. It costs $2/hour though. We also were friends
with the bartenders, Oscar and Jorge (Maya can tell you stories about Jorge!).
We came here to hang out almost every night. On Wednesdays, it's totally
packed!
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This is one of the landmarks on the way home. I forgot what it's called.
Whenever you turn off the main street, you come to this basketball court
and then you turn right.
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Go almost to the end of this street and you will reach the casa.
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This is the street that the house is on. It is very common to see
half built houses because no one borrows money to build/remodel. They
just build as they get the money.
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Here is the front of the house.
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This is Rebecca, she is from Chicago and another student that stayed
at the house for a few days. She had an incredibly hard time because
she is a vegan and couldn't really find food on the island!
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Even though it was so hot most of the time, Maya really liked this
hat. It looks really good on her!
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One of our main hangouts, Bongos. The caipiriņas were $2.50 and
teachers get 2 for 1! (l - r) Maya, a guy from Isreal that Olga hooked up
with, Olga, Jennifer, Nubia.
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This is Olga, my spanish teacher, and the guy that she had a whirlwind
romance with. I can't remember his name, but he is from Israel and learned
to speak spanish pretty well in 2 months. He was travelling around south
america and stopped on the islands before he went on a cruise.
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We rode in camionetas a lot. In Puerto Ayora, there are a million white
trucks driving around and for $1 it will take you anywhere in town. You
just flag them down and hop in. You usually don't have to wait for one
no matter what time day or night. Here we are going to a weird karaoke
bar. We had a lot of fun looking cool in the back.
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Here I am trying to stay in the truck bed!
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The next day I went to Plazas Island on Antonio's boat.
I loved this place, there were
sea lions everywhere in addition to land iguanas, marine iguanas, and tons
of birds. Here we are about to land on the island and you can
see the seals sunbathing on the walkway that we had to shoo off.
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You can get really close to them, it was one of the best parts of
my trip!
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Here I am with the boat in the background (the one on the far right).
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I took endless amounts of pictures of the sea lions!
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Closeup ones too!
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Here is a land iguana. They're not too exciting. I was having a
hard time walking around because I had two excruciatingly painful
blisters on my feet so I was hobbling around.
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The island was fairly small, and had a real desert look. It's so
weird because we're surrounded by water! Can you spot the iguana?
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This marine iguana climbed pretty darn high! But he got a great view!
In the background is Santa Cruz island, the main island in the Galapagos.
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This is one of the few close up pictures that I got of a blue footed boobie.
They are really cool birds. I love boobies!
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I love the zoom feature of the camera!
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Here I am on the boat. I loved sticking my feet off the edge. I got
really sunburnt from this trip.
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On my first diving trip since I got certified, I went with one of the
dive masters to a sea lion colony. There were a lot of them around
trying to bite our fins. It was really cool! I was a little nervous
about it, since I haven't done too much diving, but the dive master,
Carlos, was really good and helped me to relax. Every time I went
down, I got more and more comfortable.
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Here I am! I wore a wetsuit and it was so hard to get it on. I tore
the skin off my two ring fingers from just trying to get it on! The
good part though is that it kept me really warm.
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This is the dive master, Carlos, from Scuba Iguana.
He was a really great diving partner and very patient!
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And this is Pepe, the boat guy who took us to three diving spots.
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When in Ecuador, you have to learn to to Salsa dance. Cesar tried
to teach me, but I just could not do it. Daisha did really well!
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Cesar and Jennifer, they are such great dancers!
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This is from the 2nd day that I went diving. This time I went with a
small group to Santa Fe island. It was about a 40 minute boat ride to the
island. We did the first dive called the "arch" because we went under
this cool arch that was just filled with fish. The water was pretty cold
but because my suit was so tight, I was one of the warmest there!
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I was even lucky enough to see a scorpion fish. Can you spot him?
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Sea star
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More sea stars
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During our surface interval, we had pb&j's and the kids went
snorkeling. The seals were so friendly, that I had to jump in
and get pictures. It was the most fun I've had with seals since
the would swim upside down towards you, then about 2 inches from
your face, they'll dart down and swim around you. It was so
much fun!
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One of the best pictures I got!
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This one even kissed my camera!
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And he's back again!
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This is a guy from England, David, that I met on the Bartolome trip.
He was doing oil research with the Charles Darwin station and it didn't
seem like he got much work done. He was lucky enough to see a whale
shark!!!
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Here are the people on the boat. It was only me, David and a
family from Germany. The rest of them were with Scuba Iguana.
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Here is Santa Fe island.
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While we were there, the teachers went on a hunger strike. I didn't
really learn anything about it except that they were hungry. Hey, I'm
on vacation!
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Maya, Daisha and I made dinner for the family one night. It is really
hard to estimate how much you need when cooking for 10 people. We wanted
to make the pasta that I usually make (with an olive oil sauce), but we
couldn't find good parmesean and fresh basil. So we decided to make
just normal spaghetti. It took us forever to get the stuff that we
needed. Then, as we were cooking it, we ran out of water! Luckily, it
was only due to something being wrong with the pipes. We had to boil
the water 3 minutes before cooking the spaghetti since we had to use the
tap water. It turned out pretty good!
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Here is Cesar, playing with the dogs. He is so good with them! The
puppy is named Tao, the all black dog is Tequila and the black and
white dog is Hunter.
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Here is another picture of Tao.
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This is my room in the house. It was pretty comfortable lodgings.
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This is the bathroom.
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Here is the main area of the house.
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This is the front gate.
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This is the back patio.
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This is the laundry area that they used before they got a
washing machine.
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I taught Cesar how to fold paper cranes.
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I went on a trip to the highlands, arranged through the Mangrove Inn.
I took a camioneta to this abandoned looking restaurant in what seemed
like it was in the Twilight Zone, and this older gentleman, Michaelangelo,
greeted me there. He was a really nice guy and I could speak spanish
with him fairly well. We rode on horseback to the tortuga reserve.
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We saw a lot of giant turtles. It is really cool when they "hiss" at
you!
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More turtles.
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They were pretty big! It was around here that we ate fresh
passion fruit. I've never had it before, so he had to teach me how
to eat it. You bite a litte hole at the top, then you suck the
stuff out of it. It was more tart than I expected. We also had
something called "tomatillos", that he said was only found in
the islands. They are little "berries" that were exact replicas
of tomatoes. They were really good and a little sweet.
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On the way back to the abandoned restaurant, we went to the lava
tubes. Michaelangelo left me here and had to go turn on the lights.
I was a little confused because I wasn't sure if he was going to
come back or not. He didn't. So, I walked in a ways, but since I
didn't know how long it went to, I turned around. It was really hard
trying to set the camera up to take a self timed picture!
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This is Digna, the mother of the family.
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Me with Maya and Nubia.
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Me and Jose
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Just the girls - Olga, Maya, Nubia, Daisha, Jennifer and me in front.
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Oscar, the best bartender at Limon y Cafe. He was a really nice guy!
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The bartenders at the Limon y Cafe. This was my last night here.
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Olga, Jennifer and Nubia
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Me and Rachel.
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Nina, one of the divers that went with me to Santa Fe island. She was
a really nice person from England(?), volunteering at Scuba Iguana.
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Jennifer and her boyfriend, Miguel. I never really quite
understood their relationship...a very long story!
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This is Jonathan, a 19 year old from England. I was sad that we
didn't get to really talk until my last night. He was a really
nice guy, also another English teacher.
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I had to wait around awhile at the airport. It took a long time to
get from the town to the Airport. I thought about all the fun times
I had and I missed my "family" already!
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