The Galápagos Islands are named after a very unique species: tortoises. Today we were going to see the giant tortoises. We took a 30 minute taxi to where you could see the tortoises in their natural habitat. We stopped at the first tortoise, two meters from where I was standing. Too bad you couldn’t touch them! It stood 1 meter tall and looked like a large bolder.

We passed a second, then a third, all of them looked the same but they were everywhere!

We got to the end of the path and there lay two tortoise shells. We asked if we could go in them and we could. I looked at the front. I looked at the back. HOW DO I GET IN?! I put one of my feet in the front of the shell, then the other. I got on the ground and shimmied the rest of my body through. To my surprise I was comfortable. We took a few pictures then got back in the taxi and drove back.

It was both scary and fun. It was scary because you were afraid of stepping on a turtle. It was fun because it was just plane cool!