The sun appeared over the choppy horizon. It was our final morning as we sailed towards a rocky outcrop in the distance. A cool breeze blew in off the stern. Everyone sat staring, hands wrapped around their hot coffee mugs. We gazed pensively into the distance.
 
We'd gotten a good last-minute deal for our one week excursion through the Galapagos Islands. Some folks who'd booked months in advance paid over $2,000.00. Thom and Margaret the tight-wad negotiators from Holland paid less than half for the last cabin by the engine-room. But now any animosity that may have existed by the unfairness of the unscrupulous travel agents had long since dissipated. 
 
 As we approached the seventy-five or perhaps one-hundred metre high rocky point it began to look like a mini version of snow covered Mount Everest.
"s***" Thom the Dutchman said to no one in particular.
"What?" replied the elderly English birder with a distasteful grimace.
"White s***...on the mountain. It is the s*** of the bird."
The birdsman replied with only a bent smile.
 
Ellen sat, legs dangling over the bow as a group of dolphins seemed to guide us onward.
I studied my shipmates, all European and American as their eyes began to well from the wind that whistled across the bow. Then I felt a tear run down my cheek. It wasn't the wind at all, but time; our few final hours on the Monseratt.