My Good Friend Marina

One of the best side effects of volunteering with Earthwatch is that you make connections around the globe with such wonderful people. People you would never have known about otherwise, and who enrich your life so much. It’s probably my second favorite thing about Earthwatch!

Marina is one such person. She is from Argentina, but I met her in Arizona while on the Forest Owl expedition back in 2018. We were assigned roommates in one of the bunk rooms and instantly became fast friends, despite the potential language barrier. Thankfully, her English is way better than my Spanish – although, I did make an effort to at least try to speak to her in her own tongue.

Fast forward six or seven years, and we’re still friends. I even got to go down to Buenos Aires to visit her on my way to the expedition in Patagonia a couple years ago! We text each via WhatsApp other almost daily and do the whole Facetime thing every other month or so, just to catch up on each other’s news.

The coolest thing about Marina is that she sends me pictures all the time. Just odd little snapshots of her day, as she finds them. She and I share a love of nature, and each picture sparks a whole new conversation.

I have decided to share a few of her pictures with you: you can see that she also has quite the artistic eye.