Baby Mama Drama: Galapagos Islands Week 3
- Kjerstin Roberts
- Jan 17, 2021
- 12 min read
I'm going to apologize in advance that this week will be wildly picture heavy. I went scuba diving several times and got tons of pictures, so you'll definitely see those here!
Day 1
I spent the day working at the dive shop. Nothing super exciting happened. I've attached a video of the walk from my house down to the street. It's super shaky, but I think it shows the steep hill, ocean views, and beauty pretty well. I loved just being able to look out at the incredible scenery before me every day while walking. I definitely preferred to walk everywhere as opposed to taking taxis like some people wanted to!
I also loved looking at the wildlife you could see even while walking. Iguanas and sea lions frequently shared the street with pedestrians and cars. Sea lions in particular would walk down the street with you when you were close to the ocean, which is just mind boggling. I love nature, so this was always a treat to me!
While at the dive shop for the day, Will offered me a full time position at the shop. He had a hard time trusting Josue, one of the other people who worked there, and he wanted me to take over his position. While I loved the dive shop, I knew that wasn't what I was supposed to spend my life doing, so I had to turn it down. It was definitely an interesting turn of events though!
While walking home that night, I saw a beautiful total eclipse and blood moon. Pictures and videos don't do it justice, so I haven't put anything here, but it was an incredible sight to behold! Everyone was out of their houses looking at it. Because of the lack of pollution, it was very easy to see the moon and stars every night in the Galapagos, but this was a particularly stunning night.
Dave and Jane also came back from Santa Cruz. Jane said that Dave had been cranky the entire time and that she would never vacation with him again. Dave came back with a terrible attitude and moved out of the house that night because he did not want to do any more work. It was all quite sudden and dramatic, but that seemed to be pretty typical of Dave. He did whatever he wanted to do with no regard for anyone else's thoughts or feelings.
Day 2
I worked in the morning before coming home to some additional people at my host family's house. Analia's cousins and two of her uncles had come over. My host dad Eduardo was one of 11 kids, so there were always plenty of people around. I spent the first part of my afternoon playing with Analia's cute little cousin Ricardo, who was five years old. For some reason, my painted toenails were really interesting to him, so he loved to play hide and seek with my feet, which is pretty hysterical honestly. Mostly I just think he was happy to be having so much attention from someone. Analia was laughing, so it was a pretty fun time to just hang out together.
After playing with Ricardo and Analia for a while, I headed down to town and met up with Carlos, the last Colombian friend I met in the Galapagos. His other friends had already left, so we spent the day together. I worked at the dive shop most of the afternoon and evening, so he just stuck around with me chatting all the way until I got off at 8. We ate dinner together then and exchanged contact information so we could keep in contact, even after he went back to Bogota.
After dinner, we walked by the dive shop multiple times to try to find Will and this girl Emma, who had come in for a night diving tour. We missed them and learned later that they had hidden in a closet to not be seen by us. They definitely were hooking up, and all Carlos and I wanted to do was watch a movie with them. It ended up not being a big deal, though, because we ran into Jane, Dave, and Artur while hanging out near the dive shop.
Now this is where things start to get really trippy! Dave, who was 37, found out he had gotten a girl pregnant. She had just turned 18. Yes... you read that correctly. They slept together when she was 17 and a volunteer at his national park in Africa. Her parents were (understandably) furious because he was 20 years older than her, and she had a bright future ahead of herself. In light of this situation, Dave confessed that he was in love with her, even though he had just been calling her a friend the entire time we had been hanging out. They had been talking every day, and I knew who she was from our conversations! Dave definitely had some stuff to work through.
When Dave finished his little confession session, he went to the bar with Artur and Jane to try and drown his worries. I think Jane was just worried about his mental health. She is such an incredible friend and person, and I know she wouldn't want him to be in pain.
Meanwhile, Carlos and I took one last pass by the dive shop and couldn't find Will or Emma. This was quite sad because Will was leaving for Guayaquil (the closest city on the mainland) the next day, AND Carlos was leaving to go back home to Bogota, Colombia. For me, this meant two of the people I was closest to on the island were headed somewhere else. Mostly, the night ended on a sad and also very interesting note between Will and Emma hiding out, Dave getting an underage girl pregnant and revealing he was actually in love with her and wanted to get married, and Carlos spending his entire last afternoon and evening just hanging out with me.
Day 3
I spent the morning at school helping out the kindergarteners with some school assignments before going home for lunch and then hitting up the panaderia. I loved their passionfruit cheesecake! It seriously was so delicious. While there, I ran into a girl who had just started working at the same school as me the day before. Because there was only one elementary school on the entire island, this wasn't entirely shocking. However, it was fun to get to see another volunteer at the school!
She was there with another friend. The girl from school was named Stella, and her friend was named Andrea. Both were from Norway and in the Galapagos to study Spanish and volunteer. We ended up talking for more than three hours about plans for the future. They were there for almost the exact same amount of time as me, so we planned to hang out almost every day as they were my age and interested in many of the same things.
After spending so long at the panaderia, I headed home and talked on the phone with my friend Kenna and my sister Abi for a long time before bed.
Day 4
We spent the day outside with our kids, despite it being pouring rain. We were planning to be having lots of outdoor games and practice sports, but the rain changed our plans. We played with legos, learned some yoga, and just ran around on the bleachers instead.
After school, I ate lunch at my favorite street food shack. I had papas rellenas (basically mashed potatoes fried around a core of meat and vegetables) while looking out at the ocean. Then, I headed for the dive shop. Shockingly, Will was there. He offered me a job yet again and told me he wanted me to be in charge of all the money for the month that he was planning to be gone. I turned him down again and left to meet up with Dave and Jane.
Because of the pregnancy, Dave was understandably going through a rough patch. He wanted to get married to the girl but wasn't sure what he would do for a career because she was from Germany. He was from Australia and New Zealand and currently lived in Namibia in Africa. Both her parents were doctors who wanted more for their daughter than an unplanned pregnancy with a park ranger who was 20 years her senior. He basically could have been her parent. Jane and I sat and listened while eating rooftop sushi and getting some drinks. Honestly, it was a lot to process, even for me when I had absolutely nothing invested in the outcome of the situation other than hoping Dave would mentally be okay.
Eventually, Dave also told us that he had pictures of this girl in only her underwear going back all the way until she was 15. It turns out they had been sleeping together for a while. Honestly, Jane and I felt quite disgusted by the entire thing because he essentially had child pornography on his phone. He also had kind of been hitting on me for the entire two weeks that we lived together, so it felt a little grimy. We weren't quite sure what to think, and Dave left to go get drunk on hard liquor. Jane and I enjoyed our pina coladas (mine virgin and hers alcoholic) for a while longer while listening to the waves before heading home.
Day 5
On this day, we only had a short amount of school to go to while we practiced for a program we would perform for the parents the next day. The rehearsals were pretty intense with the teachers yelling at the kids to do exactly as they were told. I had the pleasure of going around trying to police the kids. At the end of the day, I ended up just hanging out with the troublesome kids to try to get them to pay attention. I believe you get a lot farther with kindness, rather than yelling at people to try to get them to do what you want them to. So far, this has been a successful philosophy.
After an unpleasant morning at school, I was able to go on three different scuba dives. Stella and Andrea wanted to learn how to scuba dive, so I was able to take them out along with a guy from Alpha Scuba named Jose.
To start off the day, we went to the same wall dive I did as a night dive. We taught the girls all about gear and kitted them out. Neither had been scuba diving before, so it was really fun to explain to them how everything worked together to create a way to breathe underwater. When they were ready, we called the captain to take us over. The captain was honestly the happiest person ever, and I loved working with him. This video of him making fun of me while I'm getting in the water makes me laugh every time.
After descending down about 30 feet, we spent our time swimming around and exploring all sorts of ocean creatures. When their air began to dwindle, we ascended, made our safety stop, and then loaded back onto the boat. We sat on the boat for a bit, ate some snacks, and cruised around for a while so we would wait the appropriate amount of time before beginning our second dive of the day in a new location.
Our second dive of the day went even more smoothly than the first one. Instead of diving along a wall that required a lot of kicking and movement, we stayed over in the bay near Punta Carola beach. This bay was fairly easy to navigate, so we were able to just enjoy ourselves. We even played with a sea lion mom and her cub for a little while! Mostly I just loved every single second of diving with Stella and Andrea. They were so eager to learn and extremely fun to be around. They laughed easily and made friends even more easily. No one in their right mind could possibly dislike either of them.
After finishing our dives, we went back to the dive shop to unload and clean our gear. I ate dinner with the girls and then went back to the dive shop because Will had told me he needed my help on a night dive. Will actually hadn't left for Guayaquil yet because he had decided to postpone his trip for undisclosed reasons, so he was still letting me do everything with him, including this night dive.
We packed up and got ready for the night dive. This night dive was just as spectacular as the first one I went on. The bioluminescence was not quite as strong due to the time of the month and the tides, but it was still definitely there. The two people were doing the night dive for still loved it, so that was great.
For night dives, we took the boat out, so I still got to hang out with the captain for a while. He helped us all set up our stuff by providing additional light for us to get ready with. We wanted to make sure we were safe on our dive.
After another spectacular night dive, I headed home for one of the best nights of sleep I've ever had. Nothing takes it out of you quite like scuba diving does. I think it's probably a combo of being underwater for so long, swimming, the different ratios of oxygen, and being out the sun. Regardless, post-dive sleeps are always the most hard core of any other sleeps.
Day 6
On this day, we performed our school program for the parents of the kindergarteners. It was a hassle trying to get all of the kids set up in the right way. The program was essentially an obstacle course that the kids had to complete in a certain order. There were five stations with different things to do at each one. It was also all coordinated to a teacher's whistle, so it was quite a complicated program. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures or videos because I would LOVE to be able to share them. I'm not really sure how to describe exactly what happened, but suffice it to say that is was extremely odd.
After the program, we all ate chocolate cake like it was some big and amazing thing the kids had accomplished. Basically, all they had done was run and do very simple tasks like walk across a balance beam or jump through hula hoops. Even the kids did not think it was very difficult. However, I am glad they were celebrating the kids, even if it was for all the wrong reasons.
After work, I met Jane at La Loberia for lunch. While I was stopped at the panaderia to pick up some pastries for lunch, I ran into the missionaries yet again. Because I had been missing church due to not knowing where the church was located, the missionaries showed me where it was. The Church's website did not have a location for the church house, which was kind of odd, but after seeing the church, I completely understood why.
When I finally made it to La Loberia, I walked the path to the beach alone until I found Jane and Kaz. Kaz was this super awesome hippie dude from Jersey, the country not the state. We had the most amazing time just sitting and chatting. We also were able to snorkel and see some sea turtles and sea lions.
After we finished at the beach, we took a taxi back into town before meeting up with Stella and Andrea for a party. Someone at their B&B had invited them to a house party on the island, so Jane, Kaz, and I decided to join them. When we showed up, it turned out to be someone's birthday party that we had to pay to attend! The fee was literally $5, and I'm so confused as to why. The party wasn't even that fun. The band was weird, they didn't have any non-alcoholic drinks, and it just wasn't that fun.s I'll attach a video of the band so you can see what I'm talking about. The highlight was the rooftop view of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno and the ocean. I tired of the party pretty quickly and made my way home, which was only a short two blocks away.
Day 7
That morning, Dayana, my host sister, asked to borrow my phone. I let her, thinking it was fairly harmless because she did not have her own phone to contact people off of. This was an incorrect assumption to make. She asked if I wanted to go to the beach, so of course I said yes. When we showed up there, her boyfriend that she wasn't allowed to have was there. Because of this, there was TONS of PDA, which I don't love. I ended up leaving the beach pretty quickly and heading home.
I spent the rest of the day at the dive shop hanging out with Will. He bought me an entire coconut to drink the water of and then eat the outer coating. We mostly just chatted and watched the shop.
That night, I went night snorkeling with him, a girl named Maria from Argentina, and a girl named Lara from Germany. Those girls were hilarious, and we were in fits of laughter the entire time. All of us, other than Will, spoke both English and Spanish, so we had a grand old time laughing our butts off while hiking to the top of the mountain to look at the stars and then while looking at the ocean. They both didn't want to drink during the experience, which made it even better. Being sober so you can be safer and remember more of your experiences is a better move in my opinion.
Life Lessons
Don't associate with known pedophiles or let them hit on you when at all possible.
Try not to get involved in baby mama drama.
Don't develop too big of a crush on someone you've only known for a week, or you'll be really sad when they go home.
Always take the opportunity to scuba dive as much as possible.
Celebrate kids' successes with them!
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