Never in My Life

Never in my life… I keep saying these four words, followed by something like “did I ever imagine I would be seeing/doing this.” I recently asked myself “Can you have an overload of awesomeness?” I decided you can’t. Why limit your ‘happy-meter’? Heck, I’ve been breaking the gosh darn happy-meter for a while now.

My Mama and Bill came to visit me in Ecuador. Even they will admit it was not on their top 10 list of places to visit (and I think that’s putting it nicely). Ah hem, well, well, well… once again does Ecuador surprise :)

The first two days they were here, we went to this hacienda that was one hour south of Quito. As we were getting close to the hacienda, I was starting to think ‘Where in the world did Mom book us to ride horses for two days?’ But, how silly of me to doubt, for even a second, my mom’s incredible knack for finding the little gems. This hacienda was simply beautiful and had been in the same family for five generations. It was in an absolutely gorgeous setting, and it felt like it was in the middle of nowhere (quite frankly, my favorite places are in the middle of nowhere). For two days, we rode horses and it was incredible. Breathing the fresh air, seeing Ecuador in such a great way, riding horses, eating good food, and enjoying the chit chat with the owner of the hacienda and his wife... all so cool. Bottom line: awesomeness.

After our hacienda excursion, we headed to the Galápagos Islands. I had been just two weeks before, but we had stayed in hotels. This time, we were taking a four-day cruise to do the island hopping. Holy Smokes. It was still the good ole same Galaps I had come to know and love, but it was completely different traveling by boat. We saw 7 islands in 4 days, so needless to say it was go, go, freakin-go. Let’s get straight to the highlights.

1. Rambo snorkeling- that’s what they kept calling it. There were about 12 of the 74 passengers that decided to do the hardcore, current sweeping, advanced swimmer, deep water snorkeling. We saw beautiful fish, starfish, turtles, and more.
2. The Hike around Española- we did a 3-hour leisurely hike around Española, one of the islands. It was so enjoyable to take our time and take it all in. Here we saw lots of marine iguanas, blue-footed boobies (babies too!), albatrosses, some other birds that I’m already forgetting the names of, crabs, and sea lions. We then took a moment to sit down and soak it all in. Breathtaking.
3. Stargazing- one night (because it wasn’t a clear night every night) we went up on the sun deck and the guides explained a lot of the constellations to us. There were a few things that made this incredible… the obvious is that we were on the boat in the middle of the ocean, which made it really dark and easier to see the stars. As my eyes were adjusting to the darkness, more and more stars kept coming out. The second thing that made this truly incredible, is that being on the equator, we could see the constellations from BOTH the southern and northern hemisphere. It blew. my. mind. We were looking at the big dipper, Orion’s belt AND the southern cross at the same time! This is one of my top 3 favorite moments in Ecuador thus far.
4. Snorkeling at Isabella- we went snorkeling for a second time, at Isabella Island. Once again, saw all sorts of stuff, literally thousands of fish, about 3 sea turtles, 1 sting ray, 1 eagle ray, 3 penguins…. yes, penguins, AAAND a white-tip shark. I had seen a hammerhead shark, but that was when I was on the boat, but this time I was actually in the water with it. Sooooo cool!

Basically, the entire trip was remarkable, or if you like the bottom line summary: awesomeness. We had such a blast!

Moving on from the highlights and on to ‘Em’s deep thoughts for the day.’ ☺ There were several times when I couldn’t help but think of the ever-useful analogy of the wind-being-like-God/the Holy Spirit analogy. You can’t see it, blah blah, but you know He/it’s there. On this Galápagos trip, I kept thinking of parallels or other examples for this analogy. It’s like the ocean. There is so much in the ocean that you don’t even think about, but you know is there. Even as I would lift my head out of the water to holler at someone that a turtle was below me or something, at the moment I lifted my head out of the water, I would forget about all the fish and wildlife that was below me. I would lift my head out of the water for 4 seconds and ‘forget.’ Come on, Em. My second and last example, to try and keep this shorter, is the stars. Living in Quito or Columbus, Ohio, you don’t see very many stars because of the city lights. I know there are more out there, but I don’t think too much about it. I had never in my life (see, there I go again)… I had never in my life seen so many stars…. soooo many stars. God must have been drilling this point in my head over the past few days: even though you can’t always see or feel that He is there, He is. It’s so simple, but can be hard to remember sometimes.

As my mom and I discussed a few times on the trip, there really is something spiritual about being in nature and seeing things so beautiful and grand.

God really outdid Himself with the Galápagos.

Whelp, this lengthy blog was the best I could do at summarizing the past week. Starting tomorrow I really need to light a fire under my tail and get some serious work done. The end of the semester is quickly approaching and I think I will actually have to put in some serious work! Goal for the next 3 days: write a 10-page paper. It’s game time.