¡Las Islas Galápagos!

Cassidy Eastman
Speech Language Pathology and Audiology
Quito, Ecuador, Summer II 2019

In our program, we have classes Monday through Thursday and Friday to Sunday off. We decided to take advantage of these weekends off and do some extra traveling, which I highly suggest! My favorite trip that we made was to the Galápagos Islands! At first thought, I expected this trip to be extremely expensive and never thought I could afford to join the other girls. However, after some planning, I realized it was totally reasonable! We bought a cheap plane ticket and found a hostel to stay in on the island. Also, we bought food to make meals for ourselves so we didn’t have to spend so much on eating out every meal.

I had such an amazing time this weekend! We made sure to live in the moment and do as much as we could in the little amount of time that we had. We did a lot of relaxing and swimming at the many different beaches on the island. One super fun thing we did was a snorkeling trip at Roca León Dormido, or Kicker Rock in English. It’s a giant rock in the middle of the ocean that has amazing sea life around it. We were able to see two hammerhead sharks, white spotted manta rays, and thousands of types of fish swimming right below us! This was such an amazing experiences and one of the highlights of my whole trip.

This trip was so rewarding because I made so many memories and also many Ecuadorian friends. We met some people who lived there and hung out with them late on the beaches and just talked while looking at the stars (which were breathtaking because there is not much light pollution on the island!). My Spanish skills increased drastically this weekend because we talked so much with our new friends! When I got back home to my host family, they noticed that I could understand them and respond better, which was an awesome feeling.