I’ve never really been a beach person.

And that’s that. The beaches of the Galápagos, though beautiful and pristine and quiet, didn’t necessarily change that. I thought they might — I thought that perhaps what was holding me back all these years, and that I just hadn’t, as the Corona ad puts it, “found my beach.”

And I guess I still haven’t. I’m beginning to wonder if there is a beach for me out there, or if I’m more of an Anakin Skywalker, doomed to hating sand forever.

While I don’t love beaches, I still like them, every once in a while. The red sand beaches of Rábida Island just might be my favorite from this summer (they certainly beat the jellyfish-infested beach of Naples, Italy). For one, they made for some killer color-coordinated photographs when paired with my orange outfit.

Secondly, the island itself was just beautiful. I think what I appreciated most of everything I saw in the Galápagos was the physical form of the islands themselves. They were unlike anything I’d seen before — and they were so different from each other.

Take, for example, the difference between Rábida, which I visited in the morning, and Bartholomé, which I visited in the afternoon.