Island Hoppin'

I've been putting off this blog post because there is so much I could talk about this trip. We had the week off of school, so for our fall break our entire program visited three of the other islands of the Galapagos. It was an amazing trip, and impossible to talk about it all. I will post a couple of pictures from each island and try to give as much detail about the trip as possible. So here we go--

Santa Cruz:

We did a lot of snorkeling. This was my group on our first full day in Santa Cruz. The water was cold but we got to swim with sharks!

This was a view of the White Tipped Reef Sharks that we swam with from a cliff over the water.

After snorkeling we went cliff jumping. The scariest part of this was actually climbing up the wall. There was no easy stairwell to the top. You just had to climb as high as you wanted to go, and then jump when you were ready. I think my highest jump was from about 40 feet. The water was crystal clear and felt great.

And of course, we spent one afternoon at the beach. This is our People & Politics class posing for a group photo on the beach! The sand felt like baby powder and the water was the perfect temperature. This was a great way to end our time on Santa Cruz!

Bartolome:

There are no words to describe this island, really. This was probably the most beautiful piece of landscape I've ever seen. This is one of the uninhabited islands, so obviously we couldn't stay on the island. Instead, we just went for a day trip here. We hiked to the top of the lookout point (where this photo was taken), then spent the rest of the day snorkeling and laying on the beach. We swam around with 5 more White Tipped Reef Sharks. I'd say I was within 4 or 5 feet of these guys this time. It was awesome.

Also, the large rock figure on the right side of the photo is known as Pinnacle Rock. This is one of the iconic photos that symbolizes the Galapagos.

This is some of my friends and I on the boat ride to Bartolome. This boat ride was just about as fun as the time on the island. It was a 2.5 hour ride of craziness, good food, and lack of sleep. Naturally we all went a little loco.

Because we're greatly outnumbered, we felt the need to take a dude pic. These were also my roommates for the week long trip: Dave, Quinn, and John-Michael.

Isabela:

Of the inhabited islands I believe that this one was my favorite. It is the largest of all of the Galapagos Islands, but one of second smallest of the 4 inhabited in terms of population. The small town where we stayed had such a beach-town vibe. The roads were all completely covered in sand. There was only a couple restaurants and hotels, and everyone had such a relaxed attitude.

One of the days on Isabela we went on a 16km hike up a volcano and then around the caldera. This land was unlike anything I've ever seen before. We felt like we had been transported into the time of Jurassic Park.

We also went on a hike through an underground lava tunnel. This was very similar to the caves we have in the states, however these were all created purely by lava. It was crazy to think about the concept of lava running through the very caves we were walking through. The island of Isabella had a lot more volcanoes, as it is a much bigger island.

Halloween:
It would be wrong to write about this trip without mentioning our multiple nights of Halloween. The Friday night before we left Cafe del Mar (the cafe where we always hang out) wanted to throw us a Halloween party before we left for the week.

So for Halloween Part I, I was a San Cristobal constructor worker. Also pictured is my fellow construction worker (Anna), and a miner? (Dana).

And our second Halloween night took place on the actual Halloween night. We were on Isabella island, and most of us had very little to work with, as far as costumes go. So my friend Anna Mae and I decided to be the Grandma and Grandpa of GAIAS. Halloween made for some great costumes from friends and definitely brighten up the nightlife of these quiet beach towns Anyway, that wraps up my post on Island Hopping. I wan't able to talk about it all, but hopefully gave you a bit of a picture of what this week was like. This was definitely the highlight of my study abroad!

Typical Weekend in San Cristobal

Although no day is exactly the same as another, we are starting to find some sort of routine here in San Cristobal. For this post, I'm going to walk you through a typical weekend on the island, via pictures of course. This happens to be the events from this past weekend.

Friday: There's no better way to start the weekend out right than an Ecuadorian soccer game! This past week we played Chili on Monday I believe, and won 3-1. Then on Friday we played Venezuela and tied with a final score of 1-1. Futbol is very big here, and the town sort of shuts down during soccer games and every restaurant/store has the game turned on. This picture above is one of me and a couple of friends watching the game at my friend Anna's family bar.

Saturday: The next morning a group of us caught several cabs and headed across the island 40 minutes to a beach called Puerto Chino. The pic above is from the inside of the truck taxi looking out at us squished in the back. This beach however was, hands down, the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. One of my friend's described it as a "screen saver" beach, meaning the type of beach you only see on a Window's PC Screen Saver.

This is a pic of the whole group at Puerto Chino. This picture doesn't do it justice, but the sand was as white and soft as baby powder! The water was warm and clear as day. We brought lunch, a soccer ball, frisbee, and some surf boards and spent the day as beach bums. Definitely the coolest day I've ever spent on a beach.

We returned home from a long day at the beach and had dinner on our own. Friday and Saturday nights we don't eat with our families, so we usually either make our own dinners or find a cool restaurant to go to. This one was called San Jose Grill (in English) and was perhaps the best food on the island!

Not convinced? This was ONE person's plate. And on a separate plate, each person got a full plate of rice and beans. Literally never seen a fish this big on a plate. It was the best food ever, but left us all feeling like we just had Thanksgiving dinner! No lies.

Sunday: So after a weekend of fun, we try to get a little bit of work done on Sunday mornings. This past Sunday, I actually got a hair cut from a local barber for only $6! Probably my best purchase so far. He did a great job, and I feel refreshed. Nothing better than a fresh hair cut!

But, let's be honest, it's very difficult to get much work done when the beach is across the street and the sun is blazing down. So, of course, I got convinced to do some snorkeling at a nearby beach. We saw many turtles and even a couple sting rays.

And after snorkeling, you have to dry out via multiple hours on the beach. It's really the only way to get COMPLETELY dry, just saying. Anyway, that's a weekend in San Cristobal! Back to the school week, where I have one last week before fall break where we are "island hopping" around the Galapagos. That'll definitely be a great post!

Tsunamis, Sunsets, & Sea Lions

The class that I just finished up was called "Health, Culture, and the Environment," and when my professor Fernando realized that I was an advertising major (and the only one in the class who wasn't an environmental studies major) he had an idea for me. Everyone in the class was to come up with a research based final presentation to present to the class. I, on the other hand, was given the task of coming up with and carrying out a Tsunami Evacuation Plan for the local elementary school that is right down the street from our university.

Below is the plan that the school came up with of how the evacuation plan will work. The small green dotted line leads all of the students to one of two "safe zones," where the teachers will organize and count all of the kids. Once all of the kids are accounted for, they then follow the black lines out of the school, and to higher ground. The green dotted lines were to be painted in the shape of "blue footed booby" (an endemic species here in the Galapagos) foot prints, and the black lines would then be painted as green arrows on the ground.

To begin the project, I created stencils out of card board that I collected from local businesses on the island. Below are the booby print stencils as well as the arrow stencils.

Notice the UNC duct tape used to outline the holes in the stencil. The other student's got a kick out of this.

After the evacuation plan and the stencils were made, I had to convince my fellow classmates to take time out of their busy days (sun bathing on the beach) to help me carry out the project.

 

Although we still haven't finished painting the plan across the entire school, here is what one of the finished evacuation routes looks like. The elementary student's got a kick out of the fact that they were following blue-footed booby prints!

I wanted to dedicate the second part of this blog post to the beautiful sunsets that define the Galapagos Islands. Every day between 5:30 and 6pm we drop everything we are doing to enjoy the sunset on the beach. We're usually just at school, so it's a quick 30 second walk across the street to the beach to enjoy the sun falling.

Above is the view from my house one evening. The sun had just set, and left the sky with this hazy color. During some sunsets, when there are no clouds in the distance you can see a couple of the neighboring islands. On the left, you can see Santa Fe, and I believe the island on the right that is much lighter and harder to see is Santa Cruz.

Sunset from Playa Mann.

A group of my classmates enjoying the sunset on Playa Mann. I cannot get over how beautiful this is everyday. Some days the sunset is better than others, but it never fails to surprise me.

Incase you haven't seen enough of the awesome sunsets here on San Cristobal, below is a link to a video that one of my friends made of the sunset the other day. It's a pretty cool vid if you want to check it out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymeWJX2I3W0&feature=youtube_gdata

And because I've failed to add many pictures of the craziness that are the sea lions, I guess I'll add a couple of me and these guys below!

 

Legally, you can't get closer than 2 meters (or approx. 6 feet), but sometimes these guys crawl right up to you to take a nap, so there's no way around it really.

I don't think I'll ever get over how funny these things are. Anyway, that is all for now. Thanks for reading!

I Like Boats

After two weeks on the island, I have a new hobby that I am starting to become obsessed with. Kayaking:

I've done it everyday, for the past three days. The first day I just rented some kayaks with some friends from the beach right across from school. It's only $5 an hour, so with 2 people, $2.50 is definitely worth it. However, just this weekend I found out that one of the locals that I have become friends with owns a hotel that has 6 kayaks that aren't being used. My friend Pablo offered to take us out kayaking whenever we wanted to, and I took him up on his offer.

This is Pablo and I carrying one of the kayaks from the hotel to the beach. Luckily, it's a very short walk. Yesterday, four of us kayaked out to a local snorkeling site with the nickname "Darwin's Cove," as this is the place that researcher's believe Darwin took his first steps in the Galapagos Islands. Then we dropped a weight and snorkeled for 45 minutes or so. The water was cold, but the amount of fish and sea turtles here was amazing. After we finished, we kayaked back across some rough water's, back to Pablo's hotel.

However, this wasn't the only boat I was on this weekend. On Friday some of the other international's on the island as well as most of the other GAIAS students in my program decided to have a yacht party. We heard from one of the other international's that for only $25 a person they open their boat to you from the hours of 5-10pm. They provided drinks and snacks and lot's of music and dancing. Although it was a bit cloudy, it was still nice riding around the port on a boat as the sun was setting around us. This was also an opportunity to meet and hang out with the other "gringos" who aren't necessarily studying here.

This is Garret, a volunteer from New York who is working in the highlands of the island. Also, Chloe, a volunteer from London who is teaching English at one of the schools located in town. The last is Eryn, one of the other student's in my program from the D.C. area.

Anyway, that is all for now. Just wanted to give a short update on what I've been up to this past week. Hope to have more stories for you shortly!

Finally made it to the Galapagos

So, a week ago yesterday I arrived in San Cristobal, Galapagos Islands. It its very difficult to find time to update my blog when there happens to be a beach across the street from school. Below is a picture of my school:

This is a picture of some of the other students in my program. I am standing on the edge of the beach here taking this picture.

Now I am standing on the porch of the school to take this picture. As you can see, the sea lions take over the beach. They are just like a bunch of dogs. All they do all day is eat, sleep and swim. But mostly just sleep.

So my daily routine so far consists of class from 9-12. Then we have to get lunch on our own from about 12-1. At 1, every thing on the island closes. I've heard of a "siesta" and all, but they don't joke around on this island. Nothing opens up again until about 4pm. Because of this, is is our designated beach time. I've gone snorkeling just about every day since I've been here. There are soo many animals in the waters surrounding the islands and they have absolutely no fear of humans. The sea lions, sea turtles, fish, and everything else are quick to swim around and play with you.

My friend joey was able to capture this one with his under water camera, so that's awesome.

So then, this weekend we had a trip to Kicker Rock!

We took two boats out to this local dive spot about 30 minutes away and spent the day snorkeling through the channel. This image of the two rocks is a very symbolic image for the Galapagos, and San Cristobal in particular. So as we swam through the channel I think I saw between 20 and 30 sharks (mostly all Galapagos sharks, but a few Black-Tipped sharks), maybe 10-15 giant sting rays (Eagle Rays, I believe), and then thousands and thousands of fish. The water was freezing so we were all suited up in wetsuits.

I was covered head to toe, so I was not the slightest bit cold. However some of the class mates weren't quite as covered. See example above. I used my underwater disposable camera on this trip, but I don't think I'll be able to develop it until I get home to the states. I'm really pumped to see what these pictures contain. Lot's of sharks and rays, I'm sure!

This is just a cool picture of the Ecuadorian flag that I took as we were in route to Kicker Rock. Notice how the water is so clear.

After we were done snorkeling, we traveled to a nearby beach where we eat a stir-fry lunch on the boat, and then stripped off our wet suits and chilled in the sun. It was a beautiful day with great weather. You can see the other boat that was traveling along with us in the background of this picture.

After a great day of snorkeling and soaking up the sun, one of the cafe/bar's threw us a huge sort of welcome party for all of us "gringos." I swear I think every white person on this island was there. There were many locals there as well, making it an all around great night. The only catch was, we had to be dressed as a pirate to enter the party. Because of this, everyone in our program really went all out and got dressed up.

Notice I got a chance to wear my really cool Ecua-pants and it was completely acceptable. A couple of my friends and I went out and bought these $3 swords as seen above. They became a hit as well.

Anyway, I think that's about it for my first week here. I'll leave you with this picture below, which happens to be my favorite thing to do in my free time. Thanks for reading!

A Week in the Amazon

One of the highlights of our program, especially while on the mainland of Ecuador, is the trip to Tiputini, Biodiversity Station. This is a very unique station affiliated with my university here in Quito, that is located deep in the Amazon Jungle, 2 hours away from the nearest village. Because of this, you can only imagine how extensive our travels were to get to Tiputini.

We had to meet at 5am last Monday morning at the school where we had a 30 minute bus ride to the airport. From there, we took a 30 minute flight to Coca.

Coca was the last civilized village we saw on the way to Tiputini. This was a pretty typical small town in Ecuador. There were plenty of street vendors, and it was muggy and hot. Of course, the second we step off of the plane it begins to down pour. We thought it was rather fitting as we were headed to the rain forest.

When we arrived to Coca, we dropped our bags at this random hotel. I think our professor had stayed here before or something because he knew many of the people that worked here. This hotel, however, was very strange. It had many random animals that just ran around the hotel, including peacocks, rabbits, exotic birds, and monkeys. This particular monkey decided it would be funny to attack us foreigners and even bit several of us on the hand. It didn't hurt, but was just very random and kind of freaky.

After dropping our bags, our professor took us to the Coca Zoo. This was a zoo he took his classes to every year, so he worked this little stop into our itinerary of our travels to Tiputini.

We saw several large mammals in the cat family. I believe this was a black jaguar, or as we call them: a panther.

This is a tapir, a peacock, and a coati (similar to our squirrel). The zoo was a very open zoo where we were able to just walk up to just about all of the animals. Some were in cages, but most were wide open.

Here is a couple of sloths. I never realized how slow they actually moved. It was so funny. 

This is a peccary. Similar to a pig, you can smell these things (in the wild), way before you can see them. They smell HORRIBLE. It was rough, just trying to get this picture. All of these animals were animals that could be found in the wild in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. Aka- we would be around these animals for the next week, while at Tiputini.

This last picture, I just thought was cool. We were walking out of this huge bird cage, and this monkey jumped on the fence right above us. He was a very playful guy.

Anyway, after the zoo we all boarded our first boat of our travel. It was called a 'motorized canoe' and we sailed down the Napo River for two hours before our next check point.

We also got a bagged lunch and eat that on this boat. After this 2 hour drive, we were dropped off at a security checkpoint. This was similar to an airport check point. They were just checking to make sure we were not bringing drugs, alcohol, weapons, or any sort of foreign species that could kill the natural species of the Amazon. We then took a 2 hour bus ride on an open-aired bus. This, however, was very different then any bus ride I've ever been on.

 The bus just rode along a gravel road for 2 hours. It was a fun ride, but we were beginning to feel the fact that we woke up at 4:30am. 

After the bus ride, we hiked down to the Tiputini River, where we boarded another motorized canoe, for our final leg of the journey. This trip was much more scenic and really showed us what the Amazon looked like.

This is (from left to right) Quinn, Dana, Grace, me, Dave, and John-Michael on the boat. We're getting pretty ancy to finally get to Tiputini!

After a long day of traveling, we finally made it there. This was the view of the stare well as we docked the boat, what looked like a never ending trail up to the biodiversity center.

Now, it'd be impossible for me to go through the entire week of exciting things that we did, but I'll try to pinpoint some of the highlights, with some pictures.

This is my friend Kelsey and I walking across the canopy walkway about 40 meters above the ground. Such an awesome time!

Me at the tallest point of the canopy walkway. Notice that flimsy latter I had to climb to get up there. This was the tallest point for days. This entire week, I kept feeling like I was thrown into the movie Tarzan. It was awesome.

This was my group and I canoeing through a little hidden lagoon. Try not to notice all the sweat covering my body. The humidity here was ridiculous. I was sweating the ENTIRE time I was in the Amazon. I can now appreciation what it means to be a rain forest.

Oh these were the three other guys in my cabin, aka- the only other guys in my class. For our third day of adventuring through the Amazon, we all decided to rock the bandana-head bands. Not going to lie, the girls all took notice. Oh also, we were required to all wear these knee high rain boots the entire time we were out doing field work. This certainly didn't help the sweat-situation.

We got a little bit of fishing in. This one actually just jumped in our boat on the way there, but hey,that still counts. Our professor kept using the fact that there were just soo many fish there as the reasoning for the caymon's not wanting to attach us. They swore that the water's were perfectly safe.

Of course we had an entire night time activity dedicated to searching for these little beasts. This one was actually a pretty small one. They can get up to 4 meters long!

And the very next day we got to do a river float. What fun! It actually really was fun, and definitely refreshing. I want to say we floated down the Tiputini for something like 2-3 km. It was great.

This was us "birdwatching" at the top of this observation tower 50km up in the Amazon canopy. Great view all around. 

As much as I want to continue telling the endless stories of my week in the Amazon, I feel like there has to be some sort of limit to this post. So I shall end here, and leave you with the fact that I am now posting this from San Cristobal, Galapagos Islands. It's day 3 here, and I'll definitely be posting some sort of post about the islands soon. Got to get home for dinner, but you'll hear from me soon!