Galapagos pt. 2

As I write this, it´s our last day on the islands. Dinner tonight, sleep, wake up, breakfast, airport. I´m sad to leave because it´s been such a nice contrast to Quito´s cold and rainy weather, and smoggy polluted city. But it will also be nice to not have to cover myself from head to toe in sunscreen every 10 minutes once we´re back on the mainland! The humidity is actually the worst on Santa Cruz, the island we are on now. It´s almost 7pm and I am sweating like a pig! Imagine what it´s like during the day when we are hiking through the cactus and lava covered landscape.

Anyway, back to post-Floreana. After our beach stop, we traveled by boat to Isabela, the largest island. The boat trip was really crazy because the wind was exceptionally strong that day. I will spare you all the details, but to give you an idea of how rocky it was, there was an Israeli guy who I thought was just looking at the nice view of Tortuga Island as we passed by, but then when I took a closer look I realized he wasn´t gazing at the scenery... he was throwing up overboard. Oops. I, on the other hand, somehow managed to read a book during it all. It calmed me down a bit and I didn´t pay so much attention to the rocking of the boat. Or the fact that we were in deep, deep water!

The next day on Isabela, we piled into a van and drove up to the highlands. For some reason our driver turned the A/C on for the first 10 minutes, which was wonderful, but then he mysteriously turned it off for the rest of our 40 minute drive and we all sat in the uncomfortable heat as we bounced up the dirt road toward Volcan Sierra Negra. Once we got to the horse ranch, we were all given a small horse that would be ours for the day. I never caught the name of mine, but all I can tell you is that he liked to bite other horses, he refused to run except when all the other horses around him started to gallop, and he didn´t like it when other horses overtook him. He also made my butt hurt, well, the saddle did... after about 4 hours of riding on his back! Our horses took us to the rim of the Sierra Negra crater, which is the second largest volcano crater in the world after one in Africa. It´s about 10 km in diameter and you can still see some steam coming up from the flat expanse of lava if you look closely. We road along the rim and then stopped for a hike to the nearby Volcan Chico, which last erupted in the 1970s. We walked across the lava flow, which looked like the moon. We had a picnic lunch under the shade of a tree (yay, shade! It´s rare here) and then hopped back on our trusty horses to go back. My horse started off in front along with the two Norweigan girls and two Danish guys, and we were galloping along and my lunch was bouncing around inside my stomach and it was a bit uncomfortable... Rachel´s and the rest of the group´s horses started off after us at a slower pace and soon we couldn´t see them anymore. But then out of the blue, my horse decided he didn´t want to run anymore! I was left in the middle of the two groups as the others quickly ran off in front of me and left me and my nameless horse in the dust. Well, in the mud, actually. My horse slowed down, nibbled some grass here and there, and soon it was just me, the mud, the volcano, and my horse. It was kind of nice to be alone for a while, but then I started to wonder what would happen if my horse decided to take off and race down into the crater. So I started hoping that the other group would catch up to me, and soon they did.

Later that afternoon, our butts were hurting like crazy, my knees felt like someone had hit them with a hammer, and it was hot. Rachel wasn´t feeling too great overall, so she stayed in the hotel and took a nap for the rest of the afternoon. I decided I wanted to see some more of what Isabela had to offer because we´d be leaving the next day, so I walked to the beach with Flavia (my German friend) and Phillip (the funny 6.5 foot tall Swedish guy). I forgot to mention earlier that when we met Phillip, his lips were gigantic. He made a point to tell us that he´d been stung on the lips a few weeks earlier by a mystery bug while in Banos and so his lips were normally not so huge. Sadly, his lips never made it down to their original size and he is still having to cover them with lip gloss and bright white sunscreen. He also got the most sunburnt out of all of us... his poor back was lobster red, and his feet were so burnt that they swelled up, too, and he couldn´t even put his flippers on to go snorkeling. Then his lips started to hurt from the salt water and snorkeling mask, so he had to sit out on one of our best snorkeling trips with the sea lions. He is really funny and good humored, though, and even though he´s clearly suffering I don´t think I ever heard him complain except when we forced him to complain because he deserved to! And when you see him with his glasses and giant lips with pink berry lip gloss smeared all over them, you just can´t help but smile a bit.

Anyway, back to the beach... it was really beautiful and relaxing. I took some more pictures of a bunch of marine iguanas lounging around on some rocks in a pile of about 100. There were also some bright red crabs but they were a bit too shy and I could never get close enough to get a good picture. We swam a bit, watched the beginning of the sunset, and enjoyed our time to finally relax a bit

That night we went to a really neat bar on the beach with our entire group. It was the first time we all hung out together at night (the other nights just a few of us would go out to different places), so it was nice to have everyone together. We got the chance to get to know each other a bit better and the Israelis became a bit less shy and then we ended up dancing with our boat captains until 1;30am. They appeared out of nowhere and it was really hilarious to see them try to dance. Flavia, the Norweigan girls, and Mathis (Danish guy) all ended up dancing a bit of salsa for a bit. If only I were good enough, too. At the end of the night it was just Flavia, me, Matan, Oskar, and Sofia (our silly travel agent... why is it that Rachel and I always end up going on our tours with the agents who sold us the tours? Haha). As we walked home, we looked up and realized we had never seen so many stars before. It was beautiful.

The next day we had the chance to snorkel with penguins! The penguins in the Galapagos are the only tropical penguins in the world. They are too cute. And very speedy! We spent a while in the water trying to chase them down so we could actually see them up close. They just flew through the water with the greatest of ease, I cannot figure out how they managed to move so quickly. We also saw an octopus and blue footed boobies.

After our swim with the penguins we went to Tiburon Islet and hiked around a bit. It is a small little island that we easily walked the length of in a half hour or so, formed completely of black lava. We saw those crazy red crabs again, more iguanas lounging around on rocks and spitting salt water out of their noses at us, and some really cute sea lions that were total hams for all of us photographers. There was a mother and baby who flung themselves out onto the rocks in front of us and just started striking a bunch of poses. They are so playful and fun... can we have one for a pet Mom and Dad?

In the afternoon we sailed (okay, I mean we flew across the ocean at lightening speed) to Santa Cruz, the last island stop on our tour. We stayed in Puerto Ayora, the main town in the Galapagos with about 12,000 inhabitants. We were there for 3 nights. We ended up changing around the next day of our tour because nobody seemed to like the idea of waking up at 4am to take a 45 minute bus ride to the north of the island and then take a 3 hour boat ride to Bartolome Island (it is the island that is always in the typical Galapagos Island pictures.... very beautiful, apparently full of penguins, but we already had the great luck of swimming with some on Isabela). Instead, we bused to the north of the island and then went to North Seymour Island instead, a short boat ride away (on a much calmer, slower boat this time with plenty of room to lounge around on). This island is very small, but it is a great place to see the magnificant frigatbird. At the time we went, there were also a ton of baby frigatebirds and they were really cute. They also let you get so close to them! I took a picture sitting right next to a baby frigatebird, who kind of just stared at me a bit and wiggled its throat in a weird way (perhaps it was hungry?). The male frigatebird has a large red balloon like pouch on its throat and it puffs it up to attract females. It's pretty funny looking, but the bright red color is definitely very striking agains the dark black color of the rest of its body. The males and females take turns sitting on their eggs, and while we were there we mainly saw the males in the nests.

We then snorkeled a bit more, though this time we didn't see many interesting things except a bunch of different types of fish. I believe we were supposed to see some sharks but either way it felt amazing to jump into the water since it was so hot and humid outside during our hike! I lost my snorkel, though, unfortunately and had to buy a new one later.

On our last full day, we drove up into the highlands again our bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere. Turns out we were going to see some lava tubes on someone´s private property. There is a ranch on the property and the owner´s cows started mysteriously disappearing one day. When he went to investigate, that´s when he discovered the gigantic lava tubes... the cows had been falling through the ground into the lava tubes the whole time! Oops. Lava tubes are formed when the lava flowing down the volcano cools faster on the outside than in the inside. We walked through one of them and it was enormous! In some parts the ceiling was at least over 100 feet tall, and in another part we had to shimmy on the ground and get a bit muddy. After the lava tubes, we went to see... you guessed it... MORE turtles. (One of the guys on our trip wrote ¨no more turtles!¨as a complaint on his review sheet at the end of the tour.) We went to the Charles Darwin Center, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the islands and their flora and fauna. It´s run entirely on donations, mainly from tourists. Around the center are some tortoises, iguanas, and other endemic species to the islands... and good old Lonesome George is one of them. In Spanish, he´s called ¨Solitario Jorge¨... heehee. So amusing. We just saw his butt, unfortunately. He didn´t feel like turning around to greet us. He lives with two females from neighboring islands, because they are the closest match to his species, but he doesn´t want anything to do with them. Sadly, there aren´t any more females of his own species left, so he is essentially the end of the line.

We went out every night on the islands to local bars, and well... of course we had to go out on our last night, too! Right? We all went to a nearby bar to have a drink and talk one last time. The bartender made Rachel and I margaritas that tasted like salt and ice. They sure don´t know how to do Mexican ANYTHING here in Ecuador! Regard everything ¨mexican¨with suspicion here, take my word for it. We ended up meeting these South African boys that we had danced salsa and merengue with the night before and talked to them a bit again. Unfortunately, they weren´t quite bright in the head, but the guy I danced with somehow turned me into a professional dancer and was flipping me and twirling me all over the place. When we chatted with them again, we discovered that they didn´t believe in evolution.... hm, maybe their visit to the Galapagos might change their mind? They are sailing across the ocean on a private yacht, from Panama to Galapagos to French Polynesia. I think they´re insane. Nice, but insane.

We went to go dancing next and turned the club into a foreigners only party. They were playing salsa at first, but I was sneaky and requested some electronica and dance music without the Ecuadorians knowing... soon the floor cleared and it was just Philip, Rachel and I shaking our booties on the giant dance floor. It´s okay, though, because I am pretty sure that we looked great. Or perhaps we didn´t, because soon the salsa music started playing again and everyone crowded the floor. We didn´t have our great South African sailor dance partners again, though, so instead we all sat and watched an Ecuadorian couple dance the salsa and it was quite mesmerizing. They were our age, but they looked like they´d been dancing together since they were 2 years old. All of us sat there with our jaws open, looking like complete idiots. They were really fun to watch. If only I could dance like that. Someday. Must take more lessons.

The next morning, on our last day, we stopped off to view Los Gemeles, aka The Twins. I believe they were the largest (now collapsed) lava tubes to be found in the Galapagos. They are enormous, at least a few football fields wide and just as deep. Afterwards, we continued on north to Baltra island to the airport... where we waited for a lovely 2 hours to board our flight. You have to get there early so that they won´t give your seats away to someone else. It was hot, humid, and they only had A/C and fans in the employee rooms. How nice. We browsed some stalls with overpriced trinkets, gazed longingly at the computers with overpriced internet, and I drank a nice cold coke. Finally we boarded at 1245 and we were off. We didn´t get home until around 6pm, even though our travel time was only 3 hours total.

I was a bit sad when everyone was saying goodbye at the airport. I really liked getting to know Flavia (from Germany), Matan (Israel), Philip (Sweden), and the Danish guys and Norwegian girls. I made extremely vague plans to visit all of the Europeans this fall when I go to Germany... it would be nice to visit Scandinavia for the first time and have some local friends to show me around Matan, however, is actually following a similar route to ours and will be in Peru later on... so perhaps we will meet up with him again.

Anyway, the Galapagos trip was amazing overall and I really enjoyed everything (minus the humidity, which I wasn´t expecting... okay, or the crazy speed boat rides and the choppy waters). I was surprised by how green some of the islands were... I was expecting the islands to be mainly lava and cacti from the bits I´d heard about the iGalapagos before we arrived, but in some areas of the islands I really felt like I was in a cloud forest. Everything was beautiful in its own way, from the cloud forest areas to the lava moonscape near Volcan Chico to the deserty areas to the beaches. The animals were so fearless, especially the baby frigatebirds (well, perhaps this is becuase they couldn´t exactly fly or run away from us yet!) and the sea lions. My favorite part of the entire trip was definitely having the chance to swim with the sea lions. I wonder what they thought we were with our funny looking googles and snorkels? I can´t wait to get my underwater camera pictures developed... I took a whole roll of just the sea lions as they dive bombed our faces and swam in circles around us underwater.

Sad to be back on the mainland now that we´ve left the Galapagos Islands behind, but also excited for the rest of our trip south... we´re in Baños (teehee... bathrooms) now as I write this, and its gorgeous...