El Fin

The last few weeks have been crazy, intense, busy, and amazing. I have been diving more, including one dive at a site called five fingers where we had to fight against the current by pushing off and grabbing onto rocks, almost like under water rock climbing. I snorkeled with more rays, turtles, sea lions, and sharks, and I spent my last weeks with friends with whom I had become very close.

The last class, Human Ecology, taught by Diego Quiroga, was very interesting. First of all, Diego is a incredible person; an Olympic swimmer in his youth he now teaches with his vast knowledge and experience that has come from seemingly being involved in nearly every major event in the Galapagos' recent history. We learned more of how the conflicts between the conservation, tourism, and local population sectors make the islands a very unique situation where no solution is easy. Tourism helps pay for the national park who then try to scapegoat the local population for lots of the environmental degradation, meanwhile the local population is trying to get into tourism. It's very complicated, but taking a deep look into this situation made it easier to understand other situations.

Saying goodbye to the Galapagos was one of the hardest goodbyes I have had to do. The relationships I had made with the people on the Islands were what made it hard. I would miss having to dodge sea lions while walking across the beach to school, but the hard part was saying goodbye my friends who lived on the Galapagos who I don't know if I would ever see again. I will always have the memory of the islands, but I don't want the personal relationships I created to just be memories, I want to continue them, and let them grow. This will be possible with the wonderful internet, but the fact that returning to the Galapagos is not the easiest thing to do makes it really hard.

Now that this long chapter in my life is done, I have mixed feelings. I am excited to be heading home, but I don't want it to end. Now with my parent's and me sponsoring Francisco in Guatemala, and having such strong relationships in the Galapagos, I can't just box this chapter up and put in on the shelf. As with all my travels, this trip has changed me and will be affecting my life for years to come.

I want to thank everyone for supporting me in my travels, you have enabled me to do so much. I'm excited to come home and will hopefully be leading a forum on my travels at the Chapel Hill Friends Meeting in the near future. Music helped me fund raise my trip before I left with the Guitars For Guatemala fundraiser, and that couldn't have happened without the amazing Justin and Nikki. So I'm also excited to come back and involved with Dynamo Music Production, just one result of the great work they are always doing (Check out their page at http://www.dynamomuseproductions.com/Radio_Coverage.html and you can even check out the recordings of the radio interview I did for Guitars for Guatemala). Returning to UNC, Ultimate Frisbee, and music will be great, but I will always be holding onto, remembering, and thinking about this amazing trip.