Sea Lion posing for me
The Galápagos was unreal! On the 23rd, we were supposed to get up at 5 to get to the new airport, but because they still hadn't gotten their shit together, the flight was postponed by 4 hours. Then when we got to the airport it was delayed for another 2, but finally in lare afternoon we arrived on Isla San Cristobal. We met our host families and went to the beach. It was covered with Sea Lions--they even had a pier built out in the water for the sea lions to lounge on, because they used to go on fisherman's boats and overload them them til they'd capsize. I swam out to it, and it was sick! You can get like half a metre away from them and they remain unbothered. After we watched the sunset on the beach, we went out for a delicious seafood dinner, and on the way back to the host family houses we saw hundreds of sea lions lounging about, sleeping, nursing, playing, and crawling on top of each other by the pier. The state of the host family's house was disgusting--there was this gross stuff in the corner of the shower, and it didn't drain properly so after each of us showered it was getting more and more full of water. And in the morning for breakfast, the other 3 got like half a scrambled egg each, and I got a plate with a slice of cheese on it. And they were so unfriendly! I tried chatting with the mother about her kids, and she would just answer the questions and not engage in any kind of conversation beyond that. 4 of us were with that family and the other 2 were with this wonderful family that gave them an amazing fruit spread in the morning and they just seemed lovely.
Snorkelling around this with sharks = sick!
Sunday we got up early and went on a boat to go snorkelling! There were these 2 giant rock formations jutting out of the sea that were actually made from the ashes of a volcanoe errupting under the sea. We swam with fish, iguanas, sea lions, and even SHARKS!! It was super cool. In the afternoon we went to the interpretation centre on the island where we learned about the formation of, and the history of the islands. That night everything was closed as it was Sunday, and these catholic countries decide that they want to make like as inconvenient for you as possible, so we went to this overpriced gringo pizzeria. After dinner we went to this illegal bar (alcohol can't be sold on Sundays in Ecuador), but it was closed, so we went to the corner store where they were all to happy to sell us a few beers as long as we kept them in the black bag until we were at least a block away from the shop haha.
Just your average fish market...with pelicans and sea lions
Monday we went to Isla Santa Cruz, and went to the Charles Darwin Centre were we saw lots of tortoises, and our guide told us the dramatic story of Lonesome George. We learned that the lizards on this island can regrow their lost tails and limbs! And that if tortoises flip over once they're adults, they will die from heat exposure, as they can't flip back over on their own. The baby tortoises in the breeding centre though were constantly falling onto their backs, and then their oblivious buddies would accidently flip them back over. After this, we went to Tortuga Beach which was BEAUTIFUL! I spent the whole afternoon body-surfing, wishing I had a board. It was like paradise.
It's mating season!
Tuesday we went to some lava tunnels inland on Santa Cruz which were really cool--as the lava flowed the parts exposed to the air would cool and harden, while the parts below sould stay liquid and keep flowing, creating these super cool tunnels. I totally bailed though and gashed my knee open of course. After this we went to a farm and saw some giant tortoises in the wild, and we got to try on a real tortoise shell! After the farm we hopped on a boat to go to Isla Isabella, and then went up to this beautiful ranch were we camped the night and did star gazing.
Victoria and I at Tortuga Bay
Wednesday morning we hiked up to the crest of Volcán Sierra Negra which is still active and 7x10 km!! We walked around the rim, and then hiked to Volcán Chico, the views were unreal! It looked otherworldly. We then went to a bredding centre for giant tortoises and learned that the temperature of the eggs determines the sex--if the egg is 29C it will be a female, and if it's 28C it will be male. The females dig a hole to lay their eggs, and the ones at the bottom end up getting less heat so turn out to be male, or die from not enough warmth, while the eggs on top hatch as females. They have a 4:1 ratio of females to males, as the tortoises are not monogomous, and this allows the strongest survivors to fertilize as many females as possible thus strengthening the species. Also, after the baby tortoises hatch, they hold onto their placenta and remain buried underground for a month before they emerge. And we learned that the male lizards are bigger, but the females are more colourful, which is surprising, as usually in nature the males get the cool colours to help them out in mating season.
Lifting up a real tortoise shell--they're heavy! Me and some crazy German...
Thursday we went on a boat to an island where all the female lizards were laying their eggs. They spend 7-10 days laying their eggs and are extremely malnourished by the end, but they can't venture far for food, or another lizard will pull the eggs out and steal the nest. Also, these lizards can't regenerate lost body parts, and only use their tails to swim, so if they lose their tail, they are pretty limited in hunting for food and usually die within a couple of years. Also, crabs shed their entire shells periodically, and we found an abandoned shell on the island. When the crabs mate, the males have to crab the female's pincers to stop her from killing him, he fertilizes her eggs, and then he throws her away to avoid her attacking him. We went snorkelling and I went swimming with some sea turtles which was super cool, and with some rays. The female sea turtles are much bigger than the males, as during mating season, the males will search for a female and mount her; if another male finds her, he will get on the back of the first male forming a line...sometimes as many as 4 males will be on top of the female and once, and they will fight each other for a spot in line. And if there are too many, sometimes the female drowns as she cannot handle the weight to come up for air. We also saw blue-footed boobies! Their feet turn blue from the food they eat, so the better hunter they are, the bluer their feet which signals to the females who is the strongest and best to mate with.
Crawling through the lava caverns
In the afternoon, Marc, Victoria, and I went surfing! I had forgotten most of what I learned last time I did surf lessons like 4+ years ago, but I picked it up pretty quickly again. It was super fun, and then for our last night we made coco locos! You take a coconut, and chop the top off, drink a third of the juice, and then fill it up with caña, an alochol made from sugar cane. They were delicious. Then half of us went to this salsa bar on the pier, where we ran into our surf instructor! He tried to teach me salsa, but he was better at teaching surfing. Despite our early start the next morning, we decided to shut the bar down, and were pretty much hating life the next morning...
Over 100 year old tortoise!
Friday we had to wake at like 5 am, so running off of about and hour and a half of sleep we had to make the following journey back to Quito:
1. Truck to the pier
2. Water taxi to the speedboat
3. 2 hr Speedboat to Isla Santa Cruz
4. Water taxi to the pier
5. 1.5 hr van ride to the ferry
6. Ferry to the next island
7. Public bus to the airport
8. very very delayed flight.
9. Bus transfer from plane to terminal
10. Shuttle van to the hotel. But they had switched our hotel, and we had left stuff in storage at the other one...
11. Pickup truck to other hotel to pick up our bags before returning to the new hotel.
Iguana!
It was an exhausting day of travel, But Carley, Marc, Victoria, and I went out for a lovely final dinner back in Quito.
Blue-footed Booby!
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