En Ecuador, aprendiendo y viajando

Triweekly update complete, 11/18/12

In the two weeks since we arrived back from Island Hopping, I have started the fourth of the five courses that I am taking. This one is called Political Ecology, which is a socially-focused study of ecology and human activities. I really enjoy the subject matter and the readings are the most engaging that I’ve encountered so far! We discuss different considerations associated with conservation, the perspectives and histories of different actors in conservation, and the specifics about the political and social history of Ecuador. We took one field trip this Tuesday the 13th to ElecGalapagos (the electricity plant), the miconia forest around the Toma de los Americanos water source of the island, and the windmills.

Instead of describing in detail exactly what I’ve done every day, here are a few pictures. Also refer to the tagged pictures of me on facebook to see a little more.

Toma de los Americanos. The pipes are not the best quality...

Miconia trees. This is what it looks like without invasive species around it - the trees should be the only covering. Blackberry aka mora and guava are both really intensely invasive species overtaking the miconia forests here. The National Park has stopped putting intensive effort into the island because the conditions have gotten so out of control, so the University is the only one trying to eradicate invasive species.

Lobos napping under a tree on the Malecón. I saw a group of tourists yelling at another group of tourists for coming too near the lobos one time, and I was glad.

Savannah and I on a kayak. We're not the best kayakers, BUT it was fun.

View of Playa Mann and the University from kayak on the sea.

Amy is Genesis' cousin of, I think, 6 years of age. Sometimes Amy will randomly spend the night. This is the morning after I got back from Island Hopping and Amy had spent the night and we decided we would take pictures in masks by the Christmas tree, which was set up the day after Halloween aka El Día de los Muertos in Latin America, where they commemorate the dead by having colada morada fruit porridge drinks and go to Mass.

Amy and I. Amy is all sorts of energetic. They finger-painted t-shirts later that morning.

My host mom, Dorys, and her sister-in-law Rosie. Rosie is Amy's grandmother and she gets migraines, and when she does Dorys helps care for her. I had a snorkeling date with Genesis for one Sunday but they never came back to the house after going to Rosie's because they were going to get seawater to boil for a vapor therapy-type thing that they do with it for migraines.

Other interesting things to note about my happenings:

I’m volunteering at the weekly Friday bike to school program that is being managed by Meredith, one of the graduate students in my class. We get up at 6 am on Friday, go to pick up the rental bikes, and ride off to our assigned posts to wait for kids, and join the group as it bikes to school. Then we all go to school and repeat the process in reverse - we meet the kids at their schools and bike to the stops and return the bikes. It’s a great way to get the kids active and interacting with the foreign university students, as well as to help convince parents that it’s okay to encourage their kids to ride bikes.
I’m writing a report on English teaching/learning on the island for my Political Ecology class and had some interesting interviews with different players in the system. I interviewed my host mom Dorys, Larry the teacher of the English teachers whom we’ve befriended at Aqui Si (see next bullet point), Anna Mae the teacher at Nueva Era (a night class for English for kids in town), Emma one of the USFQ volunteer university English teachers, David one of the USFQ students, and chatted with some 12-year-olds during a volunteer hour practicing conversation at Nueva Era.
The Diensthuber family makes me happy when I go around town. Iris is the owner of a restaurant called Aqui Si, which she opened two years ago after moving her three kids and parents from NYC. Her dad Herbert is from Austria and her mom, whose name I haven’t gotten, is from Esmeraldas, Ecuador and they’ve lived in the US for most of Iris’ life. Her kids are two 11-year-old twins who are more mature than most and are named Osiris and Maximis, and a 9-year-old sassy little girl named Mia.
I go by for lunch or walk past and stop by to chat often. Sometimes the kids will see me and my friends walking in town while they ride their bikes and come by to chat as well. The other day, Mia chased me down on her bike during my run to La Lobería and attempted to come the rest of the way with me until she got tired about 5 minutes later. We took them on a tour of the Galapagos Science Center, which is attached and associated with the GAIAS establishment, the week after Island Hopping and ended up eating ice cream and walking them back to their house for the rest of the day.
They have a ton of pets. They have somewhere around 12 chickens, 6 of which are rescue chickens from a factory farm in Ecuador, three cats, and a goat and dog who are the same color and sleep on each other at night. They invited us to Thanksgiving dinner with their family and family friends, but we are going to Santa Cruz for class this coming week. =(

So yes. This coming week is the final week of Political Ecology class, and we will be in Santa Cruz from Monday until Friday and staying at the Lobo del Mar hotel just like last time. People keep talking about a restaurant that serves real desserts instead of the sadly dissatisfying desserts that we try to buy in San Cristóbal.

Stay tuned!

My Favorite Part of the Island

When I came back from Island Hopping, I needed to take a long time alone to reorganize and stop feeling crazy from being herded around in a group for a week. I hiked out to the cliffs on the west side of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno and discovered what has become my favorite place on the island.

The frigate birds were circling like crazy. One of them had stolen fish guts from a boat and the others wanted it.

The path west of school that takes me to my favorite spot.

After coming to the end of the dirt path, you get to the trails.

And some parts of the trail are well marked, some other parts are mostly rock.

And out of the trail you get to the National Park paved paths.

This is the view of Cerro Tijeretas, which I do not go to because it is very high and not as perfect as my favorite spot.

The first day, I came upon such forks in the path as these and made just the right decisions to get to my favorite place.

There's the platform.

View to the left.

View to the far right.

View to the right.

View at the bottom.

View to the right when there is sunset.

View to the far right when there is sunset.

View to the left at sunset.

The first day I found my favorite spot, I saw what could have been illegal fisherman coming back with their loot of fish. Observe the numerous frigate birds pursuing the boat for free fish.

The first day I found the spot, I came back to school to find a mango stand set up at the front.

Since then I have returned to it several times, once alone, once with Oscar to do yoga (I have become a pseudo teacher of yoga to him, since I mentioned in passing that I do it when he was teaching us salsa and he was so excited to learn that I agreed to figure out how to translate instructions so he could learn), and another time with Savannah to do yoga.

Savannah at Warrior 2 at sunset.

Me at Tree at sunset.

A finch in the tree on the way back at sunset.

Sunset on the paths back.

Savannah and I at sunset.

The sun at sunset.

Okay, maybe we were a little indulgent with the sunset yoga poses. But it was so nice.

Speaking of yoga, here is a picture of a cute baby lobo who was flapping his fins while Chelsea, Savannah, and I did yoga on the beach one day. We were doing side plank and the lobo was doing the same thing, it was so great!

Playa Mann in front of school, where lobos live and keep us entertained all the time.

Island Hopping (10/27/12 to 11/2/12)

Wow folks! ...I’m a terrible blogger. And also the internet on this island is interminably slow. But here I am, another three or so weeks behind in relevance! If you’ve kept up so far, you’re probably either my parents or Tara. If you’re not - welcome to being current in my happenings!

So let’s briefly cover highlights from my week on Island Hopping.

Who?

The entire GAIAS group of students, split into two groups according to the tracks of study (one group of the Ecology and Evolution students and the other of People, Politics, and Environment students with the grad school folks. In my usual cross-over style of operating, I am enrolled in PPE but switched into the Ecology/Evolution group for the trip to hang with Savannah.)

Where?

Saturday through Tuesday morning (October 27 to 30) on Santa Cruz in a hostel called Lobo Del Mar, and Tuesday afternoon until Friday morning (October 30 to November 2) in Isabela in a hostel next to a convenience store. 6 days exploring major attractions on some other islands as a Fall Break-type vacation after our third module of classes.

When?

Most of our activities started around 7 am each morning and lasted until around 4 or so, and dinner was always at 7 pm.

Why?

Because we’re living on a bunch of islands, yeah.

What?

Saw quite a few fun things. Mostly underwater, so I didn’t get any pictures of those... But here are highlights from my iPhone! They're a little out of order, and I apologize, but I have so little patience with the internet here...

Here is the outside view of our Santa Cruz hotel: Lobo del Mar

Somebody was confused. We found this exploring Santa Cruz a bit the first day we arrived (really the only chance we had in those few days).

Big papa iguana by one of the beachside restaurants.

The tiniest of tiny geckos that we almost stepped on going up the hotel stairs in Santa Cruz!

This was across from a restaurant that claims to serve authentic Chinese ceviche and almuerzos. Whoa, never had one of those before!

In usual Nick style, here's an incredible shot of some of the frigate birds (one male and one female - the red throat is the male!) that soared right by our heads on the boat to Bartolome. Bartolome is an uninhabited island that takes about 3.5 hours to get to from the main part of Puerto Ayora aka the big town in Santa Cruz. I didn't even have something for pictures on this trip.

On the way to Bartolome. (photo by Nick)

Red-billed tropicbird. (Photo by Nick)

Unbelievable breaching (aka leaping out of the water) manta rays that we saw on the boat as we headed to Bartolome. People aren't certain why they do this - Chelsea is thinking of pursuing graduate research about it! (Photo by Nick)

One fellow flipped 3 times in a row, directly in front of our boat as we rode. (photo by Nick)

Incredible. Just wow. (photo by Nick)

The iconic image of the Galapagos Islands, taken by Nick at the top of the "hike" on Bartolome.

We saw this lobo on a snorkeling excursion on Santa Cruz. I had my leg rather scratched up by rocks in the current, because I'm pretty useless in the water.

Cute barn owl trying to nap outside of the underground lava tunnel we went to one afternoon.

Before a different snorkeling excursion on Isabela, we went here.

And sea lions chill in the area where sharks sleep. They like to tease the sharks and make them swim.

And we learned this. (Our tour guide wasn't very good and didn't really tell us anything we couldn't read on a sign...)

There are tons of iguanas on this island.

Including buddy buddy iguanas. Hehe.

The lobos found a pair of sunglasses underwater, evidently dropped by a tourist, and chased each other for them.

Weeeeeee sunglasses!

But really. A lot of iguanas.

Peek-a-boo!

You can read all about Las Grietas on Keegan's blog entry. It's a pretty cool place. I didn't jump, but I did swim all along the length of it.

Iguana crossing by the iguana crossing sign. This was next to a hotel called Iguana Crossing. I couldn't get that in the shot, but it was a great moment.

Instead of joining the rest of the group in hiking to Volcán Chico on Sierra Negra like we'd already done with the Mountain Geology class, a few of us opted to go to see flamingos and tortoises instead. Flamingos are found on Isabela, but very few other islands. Fortunately, they were easily accessible by some paths near the hotel! They come to feed in brackish swampy areas and are a gorgeous, brilliant pink color when they are healthy.

Sometimes it is entertaining to watch clueless tourists.

Further along the path next to the iguana crossing are more flamingos.

After the flamingos, we go through a bit more foresty area and then a sandy path surrounded by island plants on the way to the tortoise breeding center.

And then we get to the tortoise breeding center.

Little tortoises and my hat for scale.

Baby baby baby tortoises!

Read about tortoises, please, and ignore the fact it is out of order.

Signs telling us not to eat the poisoning tiny apples are all over the trails.

Some info about baby tortoises.

Baby tortoises.

Tortoise fetus, held up by someone else's tour guide who explained that the eggs have to incubate for 5 months with no shift in position, and this is what they look like when they are about to hatch.

Why are tortoises endangered?

Bigger tortoises with my sun hat for scale.

Those same tortoises from the other side.

Big tortoises! We went to the center at just the right time - it was feeding day and all the tortoises were scurrying everywhere for food. =)

The Puerto Villamil beach after our flamingo/tortoise morning.

Iguana tracks on the beach.

Can you see the fat finch? It lives on the organic farm that we revisited for lunch after the rest of the group hiked to Volcán Chico. It is very fat, I hope you can kind of tell in this image.

This rooster thinks it is a tortoise. They live at the organic farm.

And instead of going to Sucre's Cave for one of the afternoons (since I'd already done it with Mountain Geology), Anna, Laleña, Savannah, and I rented bikes for the afternoon and biked to the Wall of Tears in Isabela.

One of the lookout points on the trail to the Wall.

View at the lookout point.

We spotted a tortoise in the wild! He was trying to scramble across the path as we biked by!

Please read here about the Wall of Tears.

View of the Wall of Tears from the top of it (there were stairs, no I didn't climb it.)

View at the side of the Wall of Tears.

Behind the Wall of Tears is what I called the Stairs to Narnia.

The view from Narnia.

View of Tortuga island from Narnia. Can you see it? The shell and head are poking out of the water.

Beach sunset on Isabela on our way back from the Wall of Tears.

Boobies at the lava tunnels, where we snorkeled the last day in Isabela.

Chocolate chip (cookie) starfish are iconic in the Galapagos!

I don't remember why I took this picture. It's a cool sunset and there are probably cool animals on that piece of land. I think it was crabs, boobies, penguins, and sea lions at the same time. But I can't see it on my screen. Either that or it is a picture of the sunset on the way back from the Wall of Tears at a place called "Love Beach".

Kari's creepy scary skeleton facepainting.

Halloween night! Mary, Meggie, and Kari as an apple, a tree, and a skeleton, respectively.

Ah jeez what am I taking a picture of. This was during a snorkeling outing again, I think at the lava tunnels.

Can you see the napping sharks at this Tintoreras? They are white-tipped reef sharks and they come here where the ocean flows into an inlet in a small island. Sometimes sea lions tease them awake, it's pretty funny.