After spending an hour and a half watching sea lions chasing each other in La Loberia, Paco—my naturalist guide—and I walked back to the tiny parking lot where his car was parked. La Loberia would be my last stop for the day. Realizing that I didn’t have enough small money for tips, I told him that I wanted to get some snacks although I actually didn’t want to, just so that I could get some smaller money as changes.
“What’s your favorite snack?” I asked.
He pointed to a local Ecuadorian banana chips snack that sits on the top shelf of the counter. “It’s very sweet,” he said, which sounded like a warning to me because I had been avoiding sweets for months at that point.
I got myself two packs of banana chips—one for me, one for him—and a bottle of Coca Cola. I was planning to bring them to my hotel—I would be leaving San Cristobal first thing in the morning tomorrow and I had written in my notebook that by 4pm, I would be at my hotel and by 5pm I would have to start packing. As I made my move towards the car in a haste, he motioned to a small table and a couple of chairs nearby, placing his chips on the table.
He dragged two chairs closer to the table. “No rush.”
No rush. What a strange, foreign concept.
We talked about life in the Galapagos Islands as we munched on our banana chips (which were very sweet, by the way)—how life is very slow in the Galapagos Islands and how the locals love their siestas. I told him I don’t even remember the last time I spent a time like this. I always had something to do, somewhere to go, some box in my to-do list that I need to check off—and even during my holiday, I still have a to-do list.
As I went on a rant about how I used to spend three hours commuting in Jakarta, I would interject a couple of times, like a broken cassette, about how wonderful the weather was. The sun was just beginning to set and the parking lot was showered in this warm, golden glow. It felt like something so novel, but was it really? I couldn’t help but wonder how many sunsets with the same hue that I’ve seen before but I have no memory of, simply because I was never really present.