Darwin

March 19 – Word of the Day: Agridulce (Bittersweet)

So today was our last day in the Galapagos and the word of the day is bittersweet because it´s so hard to leave such and amazing place but at the same time I´m also excited to continue onward for more adventures.  We began the morning with another delicious breaksfast before heading to the Charles Darwin Research Station.  The station is a specialized breeding and rearing center for the endangered Galapagos Giant Tortoise.  It happens to be a working branch of the international non-profit – Charles Darwin Foundation – which strives to protect and maintain the delicate ecosystems within each island.  On our way in, J found a friend. 🙂

We were able to observe baby tortoises at vary stages of their lives from teensy turtles to giants!

The babies were cute but something about these giant tortoises made me wish I could give them a hug!!

After wrapping up at the research station, we headed back to the bus for a ride back to the channel. On the trip back we stopped to see Los Gemelos or “the twins” which are twin craters of sunken lava formed thousands of years ago.  Unfortunately for me, I get excited and try to take pictures while walking… note to self – don´t take pictures while covering dangerous terrain.  I slipped on some of the rocks and cut open my hand and foot and scraped my leg.  What luck!!! 😦  Oh well, if that´s the worst that happens, it´ll be fine.  I mean… I already survived a killer wasp attack.  I can handle ANYTHING. 🙂

Upon arriving at the channel (and after cleaning my wounds with alcohol swabs and bandaging myself up) we took the ferry over to Baltra for our flight out.  Later that afternoon we arrived in Guayaquil and relaxed a bit, grabbing a drink with another couple – Tony and Linda from our tour group.  Later, one of the Canadian couples joined too so we had a fun time getting to know them.

Tomorrow we´ll spend the day enjoying and exploring Guayquil before we leave Ecuador to head to Peru!

4th Grader´s Dream Come True

March 16 – Word of the Day: Sueno hecho realidad (Dream come true)

Okay I cannot begin to tell you how excited I was about this portion of the trip.  My whole trip was planned around this part — going to the Galapagos Islands.  I have to thank Ms. Hartman at Mill Valley Elementary school for getting me excited about science in 4th grade.  We first learned about Charles Darwin, evolution, and Robert Ballard´s explorations that year and from that point forward I knew that I needed to visit the Galapagos someday.

We began our day with a flight to Guayaquil for a quick stop to pick up other passengers and then our flight over to Baltra in the Galapagos.  Baltra is the island that houses the airport and that´s about it.  The terrain on Baltra is desert-like and aside from Cacti and iguanas there wasn´t much else to see.  There is a channel that connects many of the islands and from Baltra we took a ferry boat down the channel to Santa Cruz island.

I tried to capture the immense beauty that is the Galapagos, but my camera just couldn´t capture it, so while you see this photo is beautiful, in person it was about 100 times more beautiful. We also ran into a sea lion getting some shade on the dock – a sign that this was sure to be a wonderful experience.

The first thing that we did after arriving on Santa Cruz island was visit the lava tunnel.  The lava tunnel is over 2000 meteres long.   Santa Cruz Island is one of the Galápagos Islands and it happens to be the second largest island after Isabela isalnd. Its capital is Puerto Ayora, the most populated urban centre in the islands.  Fun fact: the island is actually a large dormant volcano and they estimate that the last eruption occurred around a million and a half years ago.

Above are pictures of outside the lava tunnel and then inside the lava tunnel.  Below is a picture of one of the insects you see in the Galapagos.  You can see how gigantic is is based on the comparison to J´s hand.

After visiting the lava tunnel, we visited the Rachno Primicias reserve where we got to view some of the giant tortoises in their natural habititat.  Now this is probably the thing I was looking forward to most. 🙂

I tried to capture a few of the different tortoises, and you can see just how big they are by the picture of me and J with our buddy.  J decided he´d see what it would be like to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle by trying on a shell.

If I don´t see anything else for the rest of the trip, I´ll still be a happy camper.  🙂  After seeing the tortoises, we drove to the other end of the island to take a dingy over to yet another section of the island to go to our hotel – Finch Bay Eco Hotel.  From there we relaxed and ate a late dinner before heading to bed.  More exploring of the Galapagos tomorrow!