Travel trivia: Galagagos is home to marine iguanas. Where else in the world do you find marine iguanas? Nowhere. So how did they get here? Not sure. It's either evolution or they made a long, long journey on some kind of raft or floating tree to get here from mainland (what is now known as) Ecuador. This is actually a serious theory.

Two good dives today. Pretty easy. Strong currents, but shallow enough to make it two long dives (55 and 50 minutes) with many large schools of fish.

I learned something really important today. I could tell you what it is, but where's the fun in that? You have to listen to / read me ramble first.

I met two great couples today on the dive. But first, our dive today picked up divers from the National Geographic Endeavor. We're on the Islander (which doesn't do dive pickups), but it was fun to talk to the people who are doing the trip Liz, Celeste and I will (more or less) start next weekend. The one guy summarized it best: their philosophy is "yes". I can't wait to experience it!

Two busy guys from California joined our trip. We talked a bunch about travel, since they both traveled a ton. And one is a fan of Burning Man, a walking Wiki, actually. So we had a good time talking about that.

But the really important meeting was with a (little) younger couple from Amsterdam (well, originally Friesland, but they live in Amsterdam now and other than my family nobody reading this blog is going to care about these details). We talked (you guessed it: in Dutch) and I quickly learned about their personal and professional lives. They are in their early 30s and visiting a friend who's getting married in Ecuador, and decided to come to Galapagos for a few days while they're out here. Great choice, I might add, and I believe I just did, add. Frans and Ellianne.

After our first dive (here comes that major learning I referenced earlier), Frans and I talked about how the dive is really about the dive, you know. It's about the experience. The feeling of weightlessness, the absent of sounds, the weight of the world just sliding of your shoulders likes a too big 60s silk blouse on a humid August afternoon in Atlanta. Just sayin'. What we see beneath the surface is gravy. Sharks, turtles, sea lions, it's all great, but a dive is already a good dive when you float around and nobody gets hurt. Then he referenced a specific scene on his dive (we dove in separate groups), and he said "You need to take in the moment, deliberately, as it happens. Just for a second or two. Otherwise you wake up in the morning and the moment passed you by and you will never remember it". Deep. So think about what's special about an experience. Don't belabor it (like I'm doing right now), just take note of it before you move on. We all get so caught up in our lives and the art of balancing family, career, hobbies and what have you. For the rest of this trip, I'm dedicated to registering moments. My greatest moment today was: I am diving in the Galapagos. I'm at 50 feet and am just surrounded 360 degrees by this school of fish. They're just there, and as long as I don't move, the globe remains in tact. That's special. I love that.