Gold on the Island

A common activity while in the Galapagos is to search for a particular gold.  This type of gold won’t make you rich, but it can certainly help provide you with a temporary state of happiness.  Even though this gold isn’t a type of standard currency, it could easily work as a makeshift currency at times.  You can obtain this precious gold on the mainland and I regret not bringing more of it with me.  I was in need of more and searched for some for two days on Santa Cruz Island.  You see this precious gold will prevent me from being in pain after I have been exploring the island and sea; and it will help prevent me from developing disease and dying early.  This gold is sunblock.  While staying on an island located close to the equator and spending most of the day outdoors, I, tourists, and other volunteers are constantly lathering up with sunblock and we quickly use up all the sunblock we brought with us.  A person that has not visited the Galapagos wouldn’t think this is a big deal; sure there must be lots of stores selling sunblock and it can be easily purchased.  Let me advise you: if you come to the Galapagos buy plenty of sunblock prior to coming!  After searching just about every store on the two main roads on Santa Cruz, I have only found two brands of sunblock that come in very small containers and are ridiculously priced.  If you’d like a high SPF, be prepared to put down some cash- the higher the SPF, the higher the price.  For example, a four ounce container of spf 15 sunblock costs around $5; a four ounce container of spf 50 sunblock costs on average $21.  And these little four ounces won’t supply you with many days of sun protection.  I was refusing to pay $21 for the 50 spf that I wanted.  I was considering buying a couple containers of the less expensive spf 15, but kept holding off on the purchase in hopes that by some miracle the prices would drop in the next 2 days when I knew my current supply would run out. 

Well, on my fourth night on the island, I struck some luck again.  My friend Sam and I were sitting down at a table for dinner when three other tourists were forced to sit down at our table because there were no others available.  These tourists recognized me from the other day when I ran into them in a dive shop and we all hit it off well.  One of our converstation topics was this ridiculously priced sunblock.  As it turns out one of them had a huge, hardly used container of spf 50 on him that he bought at walgreens in the states for $5.  Since he was leaving the next day, he decided offer me his sunblock.  He was so kind, and wouldn’t accept any cash. Well actually he did accept it but later gave it to Sam to buy me a weeks worth of ice cream with it. I’m so thankful for his generosity. 

We decided if we ever come back to the Galapagos, we should bring with us a large supply of sunblock and sell it to the tourists on the beach for a small profit.... this little gig of ours could be quite successful.