Galapagos

My stepson and his wife were doing a movie and slide presentation at an Audabon gathering locally so my wife and I decided to attend. I couldn't get my 14 year old to go because she wasn't feeling well. So my wife and I went. Anyway, this covered a trip my stepson and his wife took to the Galapagos Islands in 2008 and their simultaneous trip through the Amazon and up into the Andes. So they did all this in 3 weeks one summer I believe. He is a birder and SCUBA diver so he had over 400 new birds and about 400 new ocean creatures and about 8 new land animals to his audabon life list. (He started birding with his grandmother when he was about 4 to 6 years old and when he was about 8 and became my stepson he always carried and Audabon Bird book to identify new species.

One day when he was about 9 his cat jumped out of our 1971 VW Camper Van. This would have been around 1980 because that was when he was nine. When we went to my then in-laws he was crestfallen because his cat hadn't come back. So he talked to the pigeons at their house and he told me that they had said where his cat was. So my wife went to the monastery and there was his cat tied up with a rope waiting for someone to claim him. My stepson likely could talk to birds even then because how else could he have known exactly where the cat was?

So, it makes complete sense to me that he still is traveling the world whenever he can to visit all the many species of birds and fish(he especially like to SCUBA dive with sharks). In the Galapagos they dived with hundreds of Hammerhead sharks. I have SCUBA dived with sharks and I personally don't like it. I taught my step son to snorkel in the Pacific Ocean and to free dive with a snorkel to about 30 feet in the ocean. Though I had gotten my SCUBA License in 1960 when I was 12 with my father, I found that I couldn't relax in the water with a tank on my back. It is sort of like driving a car or flying a plane. You have to be on it all the time with a tank on your back because you can blow up your lungs just going 6 feet deep and taking one breath and holding that breath to the surface. When SCUBA diving if you don't follow all the rules you are dead. So by my 20s I decided I liked snorkeling better because I could relax more. Just like I"m more comfortable in a glider than an engine driven plane. And if I'm on a motorcycle I want it to be with knobby tires for the dirt back roads way out in the country where I feel safer riding.

So, watching him go to the Galapagos and getting caught in 8 mile and hour currents and almost getting permanently lost I couldn't help but think of when he was young and riding motorcycles and climbing mountains and snorkeling with his mother and I and brother and sister, and traveling for 4 months to India and Nepal when he was 14. We all became world travelers together. Amazing!