the more adventurous

we went out with a bang on the Galapagos. We knew times together were quickly coming to an end and with our final behind us after Thursday morning, we went off to finish souvenir shopping and march in a Christmas parade. I gotta admit that part was weird, I was in a tank top and shorts, walking next to people dressed like santa claus and reindeer, but what are you gonna do, Feliz Navidad.  We gave San Cristobal quite a send off with fun, friends, and some swamming. The next morning began the tearful goodbyes. A lot of us  (yours truly included) are not good at expressing emotions and are not big criers, but such a happy experience I don't think can pass without a sad farewell. Scott and Sam stayed on the islands to later meet their families for some warm Christmas vacations while the rest of us walked on the tarmac to our awaiting plain. Chao Galapagos.

With the GAIAS program we all had two more nights in Quito, including a farewell dinner Saturday night. We went to the University's gourmet restaurant, Marcus. The food was amazing, but the company, ooohh the company, was some of the best I've ever had. As toasts were being made and meals were topped with a thick salse de laughter I realized that there was so much that I wouldn't be able to explain to other back home about this. We took one last group photo, but the love between these wonderful people won't develop fully in the film. So I guess the only way to take it with you is inside. People will tire of stories starting with, "When I was in the Galapagos..." but the imprint that this time has made will last forever, and I hope everyone that I shared this experience with lets the change be evident and share each great moment we shared in the future moments we have with others.

Not very long ago I couldn't have imagined being in this place, but now I couldn't imagine myself without this place. These friendships were are roses without thorns and I love all of you, lagrimas and all.

"I have been, and always shall be your friend."-Spock

Finals

Feliz Navidad

It’s here. The final week in the Galapagos has arrived. I believe it snuck up on all of us here which is evidenced when everything we do now is tainted with some person’s comment that, “It’s the last time we’ll __________.” Just because it’s the last week though, doesn’t mean we’ve slowed down at all. This last class, Human Ecology & Maritime Communities, has us working on a 10 page paper and an actual final that is quickly approaching. Our fun hasn’t run out quite just yet either. Sure, we’ve grown into routines (like jumping of the old pier close to school) but we’re still also adventuring on. Speaking of lasts though, last week I had my last dive here. It’s number 18 in total, and it was my second night dive. We went to Tijeretas again to check out the local night life. With flashlights lighting up the nocturnal, aquatic world we saw space-ship like puffer fish, slipper lobster, and diademas reaching their creepy spines towards the depths.  After we again ascended to the awaiting Orion next to an almost full moon, it really hit me that this was another last. Through my diving here, which I would say was my first real diving experience, I’ve learned a lot, especially how to deal when your equipment is faulty and what to do in strong currents. It was definitely a cool place to learn with amazing marine life (including sharks!!!) and dramatic seascapes. Gracias Galapagos.

Tiburon Martillo

           

 The adventures don’t end there. The next morning, in lieu of class, we went on a fishing trip. 

Se llama Pesca Vivencial and it’s a growing activity that has been promoted by some conservationists to curb the impact of fishing. Diego, our professor, wanted us to experience it for ourselves in order to develop a knowledgeable opinion on it (we’re currently talking about it in class as I write this) It was an awesome experience, we split into groups and went with different fishermen for a Friday morning fishin’ trip. We had a pretty lucky day. Robi was the fishermen that took us around the coast, and he really knew what he was doing. We all got a chance to reel one or two in, and in total we caught 14 fish (barracuda, palometa, and bacalao)! Even just talking to him as we were waiting for bites was cool to learn about his life on the enchanted isles, and how much he loved fishing. The second part of this involved us going to the fisherman’s house to have a dinner with the fish we caught. It was probably the best fish I’ve ever had and it didn’t end there since the melt-in-your-mouth breaded fish was accompanied with some awesome sauce, a nice salad, and more great conversation. 

Neil's Birthday fiesta

            Although it probably won’t be my last time snorkeling here, it was my last snorkel trip on Sunday. I hadn’t planned on going but I was very glad my friends convinced me to go. We went to Playa Ochoa, Isla Lobos, Cerro Brujo, and Leon Dormido. We saw the normal sea life as usual is some usually colder water (it’s supposed to be getting warmer, but I guess it’s taking the Northern Hemisphere approach this year) but at Leon Dormido as we were diving down to swim aside Galapagos sharks a heard the familiar, “smack, smack, smack!” of David signaling me and it was a 2.5 meter long Hammerhead!!!!! My snorkel + sea water stifled scream was audible as I tried to swim as close as possible to it (sometimes I don’t make the best decisions but they keep telling me that the sharks here are vegetarians, quizás). Scott, dove like a bat out of hell down and got the closest to his namesake. We all surfaced after running out of air and high-fived each other as we regained our oxygen back and some warranted fear. We soon left, saying our final despedidas to Leon Dormido as we boated away from that iconic place. It might be a little early but I think our nostalgia is catching up with all of us. We keep bringing up stories of months ago and reminiscing to the max.

Cerro Brujo

            Sweet Tea. I’ve missed it since I arrived here. It’s such a simple thing and a recipe to make it would scarce take up half a page, but it means so much and is so much more than just a drink. It means home. You just steep some tea, add some sugar (while it’s still hot por faaaavorrr) and let it cool and voila! Add some lemon if you wanna, but no me importa. It’s the sweetest thing I think, and while I’ve craved it for sooooo long and enough to choke down some iced nesté and tried to imagine that sweet and smooth elixir. But in all honesty I missed this simple concoction far less than I imagined I would on the long plane ride to Ecuador. Who could have guessed that this place could be that great. Steeped heavy in unbelievable nature and beauty, every day here has been refreshingly full of amazement. And unbeknownst to me I would be thrown here with a group of the loveliest people that I’ve ever met. This trip couldn’t have been soo sweet without them and I really can’t imagine going very long without this concoction that I’ve found here.

Soon headin’ up north to the Land of the Pine.

I’ve got till Friday here, then 2 nights in Quito, then home!

Perhaps this blog might continue

But for now, that’s all folks. 

The Far Side

Montones de Arena

     

    We’re in our final class (chuta). This means these are the last 3 weeks in paradise and the last learning experience on the enchanted isles is quickly passing us by. The class is Human Ecology and Maritime Communities (eww) it’s a very social science class for a very natural science me. But I have to admit for the amount of times I check out and go to facebook world or more often do a crucigrama or a sporcle quiz, I have been enjoying a lot of it. We’ve been talking a lot of philosophies and how it effects how we relate to our environment, especially the sea. There is obviously a focus on the Galapagos, and our professor (a pretty important person in Ecuador and a genius) is getting us to do an artisanal fishing trip to see the real effects of this activity and decide whether it’s a better alternative to fishing. He also just announced he’s going to get the Governor of the Galapagos to come to speak to us (yeh, he’s legit).

                As always in the Ecuador though, unexpected things always pop up (recuerda SOPRESA!?). One of our previous professors, Judith, returned to continue her research and her work on the epidemic that is affecting the Sea Lion populations here on San Cristobal. She also asked us if we wanted to assist in a entire island census over the weekend. It involved being boated to remote beaches to stay overnight and count sea lions on the “dark side of the island” as my friend, David, said. All that were going (a group of GAIAS students and a group of local students) gathered late one night to learn all the regulations and the general plan for the next day. We each got assigned to different areas and all of us hoped for the coolest locations (BTW: Cerro Brujo & Punta Pitt are the coolest for your future reference). The people who helped here in the port with the sea lions got placed (rightfully so) in the coolest spots. I was lucky enough to get assigned to Montones de Arena (yeh, I didn’t really have any idea either). We then got randomly assigned partners. They assigned me with Junior, a local student, who likes sideways-cocked, flat-billed baseball cap and New York emblazoned shirts (match made in heaven). The next day all of us going skipped class bought food and pondered on the adventures we were about to have. We arrived at the old pier on the side of town with all our tents and bags ready to be boated off, even Rico (the ice cream cart driver) came to say, “chao” to us. After traveling along the east side of the island we passed Puerto Chino and a waterfall that drops dramatically to the sea. We soon reached “Mounds of Sand” and Junior and I were the first to be dropped off at our remote site. You could immediately see that we were in the middle of nowhere. One direction showed the endless Pacific and the other a desert landscaped topped with dead volcanoes. Behind the rocky shores were huge dunes of sand covered with you normal beachy brush. If you ignored the volcanic rocks and the cerulean blue waters it looks like a Carolina beach back home. Junior and I fought the wind to set up camp, rested, and went on an epic search to find our sea lions. After about 2 hours of trekking on a dramatically changing shoreline (the softest, untouched sands I’ve ever felt, basalt that looked like pillows, and fields grass waving into the distance) we found no lobos. DONDE ESTAN??? Our whole reason for being (there at least) was gone. We found some lobo bones and skat at the furthest beaches. We also found bastante marine iguanas. So we returned to camp saying that we would come here in the morning just to see if any sea lions showed up from the sea. During our down time I found out that Junior was super talkative and we covered ever possible topic I think, from marriage to American culture (due to lacking in a few key vocabulary words he might now think the US is just like American Pie, whoops), but eventually ocean breezes and shooting stars plying through the Milky Way put us both to sleep.

El Amanecer

                We awoke a las 4 and hiked to our spot. Cero lobos………………UN LOBO!!!!!............no mas lobos……..DOS LOBOS!! In the twilight as dawn approached, every rock looked like a lobo sleeping or doing their morning yoga routine, but in the end we spotted 2, a measly two indicating that the colony must have moved or died out. We walked back along an already made path strewn with horse dung, dog tracks, and a row of goat skulls (to be quite honest this made me fear for nightly visitors). We paused to watch one of the most beautiful sunrises that I’ve ever seen. 

    It wasn’t that bright, incoming rain(?) clouds hung low so it just blazed the color of a red hot poker in between a jeweled Pacific and cotton candy sky. It seems that the boat that was supposed to pick us up was late in retuning, so our little excursion lasted till 3ish in the afternoon leaving me with a gnarly sunburn and the beach a whole lot cleaner since we passed our time listening to Junior’s Ecuajams and picking up the mucha basura. Eventually though we spotted Jorge (a park ranger/veterinarian/ I have no idea) tearing towards us on the zodiac. What a great adventure!

               

  After reviewing our times apart and sleeping a lot a group of us went diving at Punta Pitt (the northernmost part of San Cristobal Island). It is supposed to be more tropical because of the Panamic current and there are also supposed to be WHALE SHARKS!! We had an hour and a half boat ride passing the iconic Leon Dormido and Cerro Brujo. 

Yours Truly

Moorish Idol

     We were soon there jumping into some wonderfully warm water. Scott (probably one of the best dive partners ever-the other is David) was my partner this time and we kept a sharp look out for whale sharks, but not soo much that we missed the Moorish Idol that nonchalantly cruised by. Gil, from Finding Nemo, that’s who it was and that was one of my favorite diving moments, having Scott and I jointly freaking out after seeing this beautiful character. After we calmed we had fallen behind the group, but this gave us the opportunity to have a Dave Master point out the field of garden eels, an eagle ray, and various tropical trigger fish. Scott tried to show me some bite marks on coral, but I guess I missed the memo on bitten coral hand signal cause I was super confused. Scott had I think his second best experience underwater (after seeing hammerheads) we he got surrounded by his favorite fish, the bullseye puffer, and got to touch one of them (shh don’t tell.) 

Scott and his aquatic love

A Galapagos Puffer and some Tortugas later we were back on the surface. We passed our surface time with a quick snorkel around the rock where we could see more Idols, trigger fish, a school of mullet, and I saw a bacalao (this one is a grouper not a cod and is endangered probs cause they taste so darn good). If we got bored with that we could easily just turn upside down a watch the red-footed boobies fly above our heads. Our next dive was at the ol’ Leon Dormido. I’m not bored o it yet but it’s cool that I am now familiar with the underwater topography of a certain place. This time though the currents were crazy and just spent my time trying to stay at depth (gauge was broke). It all turned out alright and we got to warm up to some jumping mantas in the distance and a quick relaxing stop at Puerto Grande. 

Galapagos Puffer

Cerro Brujo

 We’re all both dreading and preparing for the end here, and I’m no different. Now I only have a fishing trip, a 10 page paper, and a final between me and the completion of the semester (only 10 days). It’s about 12 till I’m back in the states and with casi demasiado good memories and my only CD of Christmas music (This Warm December by Jack Johnson and friends-thanks Marissa!) I might just make it there.

Adios to Puerto Grande

Jingle Bell Rock

It ain't Christmas yet, but it sure is getting close. Ecuador has been celebrating La Navidad since the beginning of November (it seems that lacking a holiday between Halloween and Christmas lends itself to causing people to jump the gun on Christmas spirit). However I've been  successful at avoiding the reality that Christmas (and the en of this adventure is quickly approaching) so far. I don't think I can avoid it more though, little things keep bring that warm, family holiday up. Although it's mid 80s to 90s everyday here and I will probably go swimming in the ocean today, a simple Come All Ye Faithful played by Austrian neighbor on his guitar just brings images of real Christmas trees (like the one that now resides in Pinkdoor). The Ecuadorians here have seemed to fully embraced an American Christmas. Bundled up snowmen and Santa Clauses roast under plastic Christmas trees sitting in the equatorial sunlight. And, although usually now sleep with images of hammerheads and blue-footed boobies dancing in our heads, we all feel the end (and Christmas!) approaching.

Gobbled up

As was aforementioned, we had to go to the island of Santa Cruz for the final week of our penultimate class, Marine Conservation. Lucho (remember him?) well it was to be a week still full of his goofy self. Santa Cruz is almost smack dab in the middle of the archipelago and has the largest human population out of all the islands, mostly all packed in Puerto Ayora. Per usual USFQ hooked us up with a pretty sweetbutt hotel, Lobo del Mar complete with hot showers and an occasional sulfur smell wafting from the next door mangrove. We were still technically in class, but still managed to have a lot of fun. We took Monday night to relax after our earlier final and 2 hour boat ride. We drank some cervezas overlooking the star-painted waters of Academy Bay. The night evolved or devolved into a boy’s night as we continued with our Cuban friends that joined us and started swapping jokes. Las chicas eventually left and finished the night off with some testosterone-filled drinks such as strawberry daiquiris, bloody Mary, pisco sour, and Gin y tonico. A good start to the week I’d say

Lonesome George

.

                Tuesday was met with a trip to the Charles Darwin Research Foundation, the hub of most research and conservation on the islands. We listened to some Chucky D. rep’s give some talks about the biology and fisheries in the archipelago-blah blah blah 3 major currents, 3 zones, El Niño, blah blah blah. Anywho after “class” we got to see the man himself (by that I mean giant tortoise), Lonesome George! His ancient self had a pretty sweet set up. He gets to sit in his own personal pool all day getting nom-noms and potential mates brought to him all day. It’s tough being the last of your kind, I guess.

                What would you do with a free afternoon, well we fill ours with a great mix of LLapengacho lunch (a tradicional Ecua dish considting of salad, mashed potato cake in a peanut sauce, “sausages”, and a fried egg-the best part), a nap, and then another 60 foot plunge into some water. It’s a recipe I wish I could take back to the States with me. Las Grietas was as fun as the first time and a lot less crowded. Yeh, sure David almost died because apparently in synchronized cliff jumps people from the West Coast go on the “three!” instead of the “GO!” when counting to three while Scott (a Carolina man through and through) correctly waited for the “GO!”. Haha Classic. No worries though he just stumbled on the edge for a while trying to avoid death. We laughed it off with some witty jokes and learned a lot more about how diverse our country really is. After a few plunges we hopped in for a little snorkel. There’s not too much besides bravo clinids and a school of Mullets (including the one that now adorns David’s head), but it was great to swim through some tunnels and try our luck at touching the bottom. We wrapped up the night with a talk with Volker, the head of the Marine Lab at the Charles Darwin Research Center, and Marc, an expert on invasive species. It was great to hear the opinions of experts who were super aware with all that is going on in the Galapagos both bad and good.

Our fine flippered friends. "Did you know
they have names?"

Floreana

                Wednesday brought us to the island of Floreana (that makes 5 islands in total). We were welcomed there by a pod of dolphins that swam with our lancha into port.  As the longest inhabited island, Floreana has a lot of history and we learned about it as we took a tour of the highlands. We learned about love, murder, and mystery of the “first” inhabitants and saw a stone carved into a head from the original habitats, or just perhaps a bored Larry. In addition to that I myself learned all about the plant life from my very knowledgeable and wonderful friend, Kim, who named muchas plantas as we passed and I pestered her for their names. Some Darwin’s Cotton and Scalesia later we went to a nearby beach covered with black sand which curiously resembled Nescafe (Probs the reason it tastes so bad). It was a cold snorkel but it was pretty cool looking down and seeing waves of black sand on the sea floor. The remaining time on the island was spent relaxing on the heat-absorptive playa, eating tamarind from a nearby tree (tastes mike sour candy) and being surprised when two pinguinos popped up right in front of us just to say, “Hola!”

Sonrianse y Saludense

My friend, Kim,
the plant expert

Larry got bored?

Thanksgiving!

                So it wasn’t your normal fried turkey and football (Americano) turkey day but I think we made do alright. As a football substitute we went buceando at Rocas Gordon, which was recommended as one of the best dive spots that he’s ever been to by Lucho (he has over 600). It was a pretty calm normal dive full with king angelfish, some triggerfish, and my dive buddy, Dave here, but I dunno if my lateral line was extra sensitive that day or it was just my spidey senses tingling, but I felt a disturbance behind me and looked only to see a Scott Hammer half convulsing half doing the signal for hammerheads, and then I saw them a group of 15 or so longer than 2 meter martillos. They circled as we all either screamed, convulsed, or just floated dumbfounded as Scott’s namesake circled us. That was such an amazing feeling watching this huge pack of powerful creatures slowly cruise as the blood pounding in my ears played a low brass packed symphony.  I think I can deal with missing some Turkey day football. I guess the several schools of sharks took my breath away a little too much because I realized I was low on air and signaled the leader my situation but she said it was all cool and we continued. No worries as we all know there is always a little air left in the tank once it hits zero so I just found my wonderful friend, Gail, and she graciously shared some air. THANKS GAIL! The second dive was just as super with more MARTILLOS, and some eagle/manta rays are that might have been the first dive, but there was also a lobo that followed us around, playing with us and then giving us a, “hey, watch this look” as he bit the tail of a hammerhead twice his size, scaring it away. Awesome. After that adventure we had to have a Thanksgiving dinner. We found an Ecua grill and had some grilled meat and baked potatoes (close enough right?) Even though I missed some of Nina’s pumpkin pie a whole bunch that space was filled by the wonderful people around the table as we joined hands and mentioned what we were thankful for (the Norwegian even joined in). All their love and kindness left no space empty and it left me all warm a fuzzy inside; such a lovely group of people. Don’t forget the beer though! The most crucial part of Thanksgiving was filled in with some Cuba Libres and bastante tequila shots. ‘Twas a Thanksgiving not soon to be forgot.

Hammerheads

David

              

  Friday, instead of leftovers and lying around we went to Tortuga Bay before our imminent departure. It is a long stretch of beautiful sandy beaches a marine iguanas dotting the coastline. The marine class soundly defeated our rivals and then Kim, Gail, Scott, David, and I finished off the morning with some rumble-tumble wrestling in the very blue water. Still a little bit sore. Absolutely lovely.

 

photo-bombing lobo

Tortuga Bay

                We’re back in San Cristobal now, and it’s the beginning of our final class. I do miss home and everyone there, but I still want these last three weeks to pass as slowly as possible.

Bathymetry

We’ve been here for just over 2 months now and I feel that I have more geographical knowledge on the underwater portion of this magical place. I’m quickly closing in on 15 dives now and I think I might be super close to 100 snorkels. We had a few dives with Judith’s class (Marine Ecosystems) which took us through Tijeretas, The Karahua Shipwreck in the bay, and Leon Dormido which were awesome experiences, but I’ll have to say that the dives we convinced our teacher to do and did on our own in this past class were the best and most exciting of my life. Luis “Lucho” Vinueza made a return as our professor for Marine Conservation in this class that has just passed (without having giving us grades from our first class *cough*) and was his usual goofy self, sorpresas and all. Our class focused on mostly marine invasive species, debates about the Galapagos, and as many dives as we could fit into this small time frame. Luis accompanied us when we went to Leon Dormido. It was a pretty smooth dive splattered with Lucho moments of pretending to sleep on the bottom, pointing out every whelk we passed (you have no idea how important whelks are), and showing us that they are super good to eat with spectacular hand motions. The only thing that could make it better would be if it was on some coincidentally special day, like por ejemplo 11/11/11! Pues, it was and we all exasperatedly waited and hoped that we would be under the water for 11:11am to roll around. And wouldn’t you know we were!!! Everyone with watches tried frantically to signal to the rest that fue el momento that we’d all been waiting for, and joy was had by underwater dancing by all (even if we were buddy breathing)

Our next dive would be ‘neath the Eastern Tropical Pacific’s evening sky. Scott, arranged a night dive. These in San Cristobal happen at the old pier near our university’s beach (lammeeeee) but since there were so many of us we went to Tijeretas. With the sea as calm as the starry sky above it we motored out to dive spot. While listening to Shay and Angel give us instructions we watched the familiar Orion reflected in the dark waters until we noticed that the water was glowing too! Plankton at it again, illuminated the boat’s wake just increasing the intensity of our excitement.

Splash! Into the water with wide eyes and lights, we dove and were met with a sea floor covered spine to spine with urchins, lobsters peeking from crevasses, and a very confused ray that kept nonchalantly following our lights till it realized it was about 5 meters off the bottom (whoops). Yeh, it was eerie at times with swift, dark shapes zooming past us (sea lions, siempre chistoso). While ascending we all occupied ourselves by covering our lights and flapping like mantas till the plankton around us started to glow. We did this until we surfaced we another dream fulfilled and Orion a little further up in the night sky.

But Lucho’s class wasn’t all fun and diving; we played soccer sometimes, and had debates too! Our first one was on the Malecon (boardwalk) so we could watch the sunset over the water and discoos over some cervezas (can you say priorities?). Being here for around 2 months and we these beautiful people for about 3, we could talk candidly bout tourism. It’s the root for high standard of living of the Galapaguenos and also the root for most of the environmental problems here as well. Although we will live here for awhile it’s difficult to separate us from the tourists that come here. I can’t blame them for wanting to come here, it’s truly enchanted, and don’t get me wrong I, as well as my friends, have developed a huge superiority complex over the gringos extranos. But, we see this place differently and I don’t think any of us could come up with an answer except for limiting the tourist numbers. If the Galapagos isn’t for everyone though, where is? The discussion got pretty deep and I still ponder about where my place is here> we all agree we all wanna come back, and this place feels like home, but unlike my dear friend, Jessica, Studying abroad in Montpellier, I will never fit in here. Soy un gringo por la vida. C’est la vie.

Next is another trip to Santa Cruz for the last week of our penultimate class!

Also, just so you know Bathymetry is pronounced (ba-thim-uh-tree) not (bathie-metrie) we all have gaps in our knowledge.

Also, Save the whelks.

You’re whelkcome. 

Fredinator out

Absolutely Lovely

So much love...

It can't be contained on only a few islands

straight cheeseing

The people your parents warned you about

it's good to be a poco loco

I don't think they were ready for us

I wish there was photo for every one of them

Chistes y'all

There will never be enough of these photos

If I attempt to truly encompass who the people here are, I doubt that there would ever be an end to my blog, but I’ll try anyway. My first thought on them would be cool, I experience each day a realization that I’m surrounded by some of the coolest people in the world from all parts of the world. Sure we’re all a tad bit eccentric in this group but each one is wholly, undeniably their self, and I’m constantly giddy with surprise that I’m permitted to hang out with them.

It's good to be un poco mas de poco loco

Second would be caring. I always worry  that I’ll be filled up with my experience here and will be overflowing on my return not able to bring back the extra that spilled while I am here, but I am definitely certain that this archipelago has overflowed with care long before one month or one week was reached since our arrival. Whether it is the land, the sea, the flying birds, the spouting whales, or a tree blowing in the wind, everything is inexplicably loved here by one of us, down to the last lonely Homo sapiens.




Talented would be the third. Whether it’s solo guitar, playing in a steel drum band, soccer, hockey, singing, or ability to make someone smile under any circumstance, they are so good at it all and the list goes on. It’s also not like each one carries a sign with a list of their accomplishments and skills; it’s just what they do, because they simply love it. They are amateurs (lovers) of a plethora of things in the truest sense of the word.

Love the sea

              

     I could keep going, but then this blog post would never end. These people these friends here are lovely, and I love them all. They’re irreconcilably crazy, and love being that way even more. I only hope that I can express the full extent of my love for them, and past memories and future meetings continue after this next month ends.

love the tree

Our teachers have always told us all the current, impossible global problems and that “We’re too many”, well there’s no doubt that these beautiful friends are too lovely to let just a little ol’ impossibility stop them.