Galápagos!

*its not letting me add pictures :( so i will try again later

So, yeah, the Galápagos are basically as sweet as you would expect them to be. The trip started off with taking a plane from Quito to Guayaquil and then on to the Galápagos . Right from the beginning we split into two groups of 11 and didn’t really see the other half the entire time. My group began with the homestay portion on the island Isabela. I lived in a family consisting of a mother, father, and 3 daughters along with another SIT student, Anna. Right when we got there the first night we headed to a Catholic mass (this is a Tuesday night) with the family. I have yet gone to service in Ecuador (my Quito family isn’t too religious) so I never would have expected to go to mass for the first time in the Galápagos . It was really interesting and upbeat, like a lot of singing and clapping. And they also sang the “Our Father” to the tune of “The Sound of Silence”. No joke. And a stray dog just kinda ran through the church midway through and people weren’t really phased by that.

We would have breakfast with the family and then leave with the group for the day, and return home for dinner. We spent the first day snorkeling around Isabela. This is a picture of the part called Los Tuneles. The snorkeling wasn’t too great but I really loved how the rock had eroded into little bridges over the ocean.

The next day we went for a hike up Sierra Negra to see some active craters and volcanic area (active as in the last eruptions were in 2005). I don’t know why I had in my mind that there would be some forest-like parts to the islands because that is pretty wrong. Sure trees and plant life does exist but a large portion is just exposed dried lava from previous eruptions. It looked like a completely different planet, totally barren.

After 3 nights on Isabela we switched places with the other group and began living on the San Jose, a really really nice boat. We had all our meals on the boat and then we would get in wooden pangas (smaller boats) to arrive onto different islands. We would travel during the night (thank you motion sickness medicine) and then each day snorkel or walk around the islands. This is the boat. It was super nice—we were definitely not roughing it.

We spent one day each at San Cristobal, Espanola, and Floreana. All the beaches were absolutely beautiful with white sand and clear blue water. And the animals here, most with no history of being hunted or anything, have no fear of humans. We all came within inches of sea lions, sea turtles and penguins while snorkeling. While on land, we got to see tons of blue-footed boobies, Nazca boobies, and frigate birds. There was even a baby 4 month-old albatross that was along one of the walking trails and began pecking at the shoes of one of the guys in the group. This is a picture of me with a sea lion pup.

Our day on Floreana was probably the highlight of the entire trip to the Galápagos . We started out visiting Post Office Bay. Post Office Bay used to be used by whalers as a way to keep in touch with people not on the islands but today is basically continued by tourists. It’s a barrel where people drop letters or postcards to send. You then take back any notes that are for people that live near you and hand deliver the letter. So I put in a postcard for home…. and hoping someone from TO area will deliver it for me! While we were sorting through letters someone saw some whales breaching out in the distance. So what better thing to do than drop all our stuff on the beach, call in the pangas, and chase after the whales. I was really skeptical of actually being able to catch up to them but sure enough we came right alongside what turned out to be a mother and baby humpback whales. This was the best picture I was able to get, but it may show up a bit blury.
Afterwards we headed back to the beach in time to play soccer against the crew of other boats. On Floreana there is permanent sand/dirt field with goals and we played along with some of our boat’s crew in small-sided games. Running around for a bit and I was ready to go snorkeling off the beach. We went one more time in the afternoon at one of the best spots in all the islands called Corona del Diablo, or Devil’s Crown and it was so amazing. The water was so clear and it was incredible how much we were able to see.

Our Galápagos excursion was much more relaxing and low-key then the Oriente but I can actually say I learned a bit while out there. Managed to escape without getting sunburnt and pretty much had an amazing time overall.

Organic Farm and Otavalo

Earlier in the week, we took a day trip out to an organic farm. Since we were getting back later, we were all expected to bring a sack lunch. The day before, Gladys asked if I would like a hot dog or a hamburger for lunch. Caught me a little off guard but whatever, it was nice of her to make my lunch everyday in the first place so we decided on a hotdog. The next day I went to breakfast and to my surprise, I had a hotdog waiting for me for breakfast as well as one already in my lunch. And a hotdog here means the dog and bun and then mayonnaise, ketchup, and crumbled potato chips on top—not exactly appealing at 7am. I ended up just packing it up with my lunch, which was a really good idea since I got pretty carsick on the way to the farm and it probably could have been worse with a hotdog sitting in my stomach. The farm was interesting, still trying to figure out how it relates to anything, but I learned a bit about the whole process so that was cool.

On Friday, Becca, Estelle, and I took advantage of the weekend in Quito and headed out to Otavalo. Otavalo is about a 2 hour bus ride away and it’s a medium-sized town that is famous for its Saturday morning open-air market. We got their Friday night to scope things out and then headed to the market at 7am the next morning. And we actually didn’t do too terrible at bartering, despite the whole aspect of having to do it in Spanish. So I am catching up on my Christmas shopping…hope the fam likes the gifts! But the market was really cool and basically consumed the town center, with streets shut down and constant people roaming around. There was also a livestock market and I have never seen so many pigs on leashes before…I wasn’t a huge fan of that side of the market. There was also an indoor section where you could purchase freshly cooked meals and other food items—this part kinda reminded me of Pike Place Market in Seattle, except I couldn’t recognize half the food that was being sold or understand half of what people were saying. We left Otovalo around 2 so we could make it back to Quito to watch the big soccer game- Ecuador vs Uruguay—determining if Ecuador will play in the World Cup. I ended up watching the game with my homestay mother, sister, grandmother, and then the sister’s boyfriend, a niece and her boyfriend. It was fun to watch with people who were so passionate about Ecuador soccer and when they scored, everyone went crazy screaming and clapping. Then it was pretty disheartening when Uruguay scored within a minute and then won the game.

One more week in Quito and then off to the Galápagos on Tuesday!

Journey to the Amazon

Back from the Amazon! It was such an awesome trip overall, even the travel there and back was exciting! We started off by taking a plane from Quito east over the Andes to Coca, a small town with an even smaller airport. From there we got into a long motor boat on the Napo River to reach the Repsol (an oil company) checkpoint. This is the view from the boat on the Napo River. What’s kinda crazy is this oil company is really powerful, so much so that it is able to function on its own set of rules, different than the Ecuadorian government. Its also a strange dynamic to have to pass through an oil company, responsible for exploiting the Amazonian area, in order to reach a biodiversity research station on the other side. At the checkpoint we got in a ranchero, kinda like a bus but without any sides. That took us to the Tiputini River, from which we took another boat to reach TBS- Tiputini Biodiversity Station. We got situated in cabins, went swimming in the Tiputini, and had a short lecture in the evening.

This is the view of the station from the river.

The next four days we were split up into groups and rotated where we went each morning…beginning at 5:30am…and which of the native guides would show us around for the day. The first day my group went to Torre 1, basically a huge scaffolding that had a platform on top from which we watched a beautiful sunrise over the canopy of the forest as well as some tons of different birds—toucans, macaws, oro pendulums, parrots just to name a few. Before even getting to the tower we stopped to watch a group of woolly monkeys pass by in the trees above us—so cool. The next morning we went on a hike on one of the many trails around the station and learned about the uses of many plants in the forest. 3^rd day we went to El Puente, a huge rope and wood bridge at the canopy level connecting different trees together for some more bird watching. I am coming to realize I definitely underestimated the enjoyment of bird watching…its actually pretty fun.

This is the view down the bridge. You can also see a ladder up to an even higher platform. From there, the view was awesome. The fourth day we did La Flotada, where we took a boat upstream and then jumped into the river and floated alongside back to the station.

After the morning adventure, every day was different. One of the first days we had our “drop-off” which is when the guides lead us out into the forest leaves each of us individually alongside the trail somewhere to have some time to enjoy nature alone. As we were walking along, the guide—Don Meyer (I was a big fan of Don Meyer. He was probably between 60-70 years old and knew the forest so well)—would point things out along the way for us to see. As we were crossing a plank bridge over a creek, he stopped to show us something. While we were trying to figure out what he was pointing at, we all hear this loud CRACK and before there was any time to react the bridge snaps in half and we all fall about 6 or 7 feet to the creek (fortunately dry) below. Luckily, no one was hurt too bad and, looking back, having 6 of us on a wooden bridge probably wasn’t the wisest idea. What was even better was Don Meyer pulled out his camera to take a picture of all us silly gringas and the broken bridge.The broken bridge, a couple days later after it rained and the creek filled with water.

One of the evenings we went on a night hike, Don Meyer as the guide. He pointed out to us monos nocturnos, small monkeys that are really difficult to spot since their nocturnal, a tree frog that he found from at least 20 meters away, and a humming bird nest on the backside of a leaf. The grand finale (in my opinion) was near the end when we saw what they call a langosta, which means lobster in Spanish. It was actually a huge grasshopper-like insect that was at least 8 inches long and 2 or 3 inches thick. Ridiculous.

The last day we all could chose what we wanted to do. Some people went along with researchers to follow different packs of monkeys, others went fishing with the chef. I ended up going on a long hike with Anna, Grace, Susanna, and Teddy, led by, once again, Don Meyer. Earlier in the week Sylvia had talked about how this one trail was haunted, mostly because the camera trap (motion censored to photograph animals all hours of the day)in the area once caught a glimpse a black leopard, really strange and never seen again. So I asked Don Meyer if the trail was “embrujado” and at first I worried I had kinda offended him with such a dumb question. Instead we went the day with him telling us stories of different people he knows and their experiences with the “forest spirits”. Aside from his cool stories, we also saw some incredible things along the way—sleeping monos nocturnos, spectacled owls, a non-venemous snake.

This is a picture of me, incredible gross after our day hike (and the long sleeves are to avoid getting bit by bugs. it was HOT and humid out there) and Don Meyer. Once we got back to camp and said good-bye to Don Meyer, we decided to quickly hike out to the ox bow lake about 45 minutes away. There we took a canoe and paddled out into the lake where we saw the unique hoatzin bird and long nosed bats. It also started raining while we were out in the middle of the lake which felt so refreshing and it was just so sweet to be in the middle of this tiny lake with such beautiful surroundings.

This is us on the canoe in the ox bow lake. Front to back: Anna, Susanna, Me, Grace, and Teddy. it started raining pretty hard about 10mins after this picture

The amazon was so incredible and we all had such a great time out there. It was pretty exhausting and I arrived back to Quito with some pretty smelly clothes. I think for most of us it’s a bit of a bummer to be back in Quito; I know for me the luxury of warm showers and electricity still doesn’t outweigh getting woken up by an oro pendulum every morning.