Island Hopping Adventures

Hola!
My apologies for being so behind in updating. Life has been wonderful and I had completly forgotten about this blog until a friend of mine (Hi Yili :)) messaged me asking what had happened. So here goes my attempt to sum up the past two weeks. Two weeks ago was my spring break, so lets start there...

Saturday 3/16/13
I traveled from San Cristoabl to Santa Cruz today via a two hour boat ride. Things were choppy and tonsof fun bouncing over the waves. Several of my classmates however did not enjoy the bouncing and were unable to hold onto their stomachs. Once in Santa Cruz we checked into our hotel. There were three of us to a room. My two rooomates and I had lots of fun together. Laura and I often get confused for the other person so we have started referring to each other by the other persons name just to confuse people even more. We got a brief city tour and then headed to dinner. All of our meals were covered by the university and we ate well the entire trip. Dinner was pesto pasta that tasted as if the basil had just been plucked from the plant. It was delicious. There was watermelon juice and baked bananas with cinnamon for desert.

Sunday 3/17/13
Happy St. Patricks Day! Today we went snorkeling twice around santa cruz. We saw lots of fish., blue footed boobies and sea lions. After lunch we first explored a lava tube, it was incredible. After walking over the lava we headed to the beach for a few hours. It was a beautiful sand beach, but there were lots of people there. There are very few sand beaches in the islands, most of them are rocky beaches and they are covered with sea lions. There were no sea lions here, only very happy humans. We started a game of frisbee with our guide and built a sand iguana. Geeks? yes we are. We prefer Iguanas to castles. The water was a beautiful blue, but the visibility was poor. After the beach we headed to a channel where we jumped off the cliffs on either side of the channel. The water here was cold at first, but it was so clear and blue that you could see all the way to the bottom. There were a couple of fish swimming around, but mostly there were humans.

Monday 3/18/13
Today we were woken up before breakfast to board boats to Bartolome. Santa Cruz, San Cristobal and Isabella are the three inhabited islands, so our excursion to Bartolome was only a day trip. We ate breakfast on the boat. While eating breakfast it was discovered that our two engine boat only had one functional engine.But that was not going to stop us. So while the other group of students raced off in their two engine boat, we chugged along behind them. While we were waiting on the diagnosis of the boat one of the girls in my group was sitting with her feet in the water. A very curious puffer fish came up and let her scratch its belly. It then proceeded to take the tip of one of her big toes into its mouth. We were on the boat for about three hours. We were allowed to sit on the front and most of us did, napping in the sun and keeping an eye out for cetacenas (whales, dolphins, etc) The group with the fast boat did not see anything but we were flanked with dolphins, with manta rays rolling and jumping off to one side. Once at Bartolome we hiked up the islands volcano, pausing to take photo after photo of the endemic galapagos hawks that allowed us to get very close to them. After lunch on the boat (which was delicious!) we donned our snorkel gear and after taking a dinghy to the shore we snorkled around looking for penguins. Other members of my group had the amazing luck of having a penguin swim below them but I was sadly always looking in the wrong direction. The galapagos penguins are only about 20 cm tall and very fast swimmers. we also saw lots of parrot fish (Rainbow fish! they look exactly like the childrens book describes them). On the dinghy back from snorkeling we spotted a white-tip shark swimming around the boat. it was very close to the surface of the water. The boat ride back to Santa Cruz took about  4 hours. We saw many more manta rays jumping and several hundred jelly fish. We even had a frigate bird land on the top of the boat and ride with us for a few moments. Once back we took a bus for about an hour back into the city where we were late for dinner. The other group on the fast boat had been back for about two hours, had showered and then we pulled up in the party bus, still in out swim suits and exhausted after the days activities. The party bus was more of a dance/sing-a-long bus. we turned up the music and used up the last of our energy.

Tuesday 3/19/13
Today we tool a boat to Isabela, the largest of the Galapagos Islands and probably my favorite. There was tons of tourism on Santa Cruz and there's a significant amount on San Cristobal, but Isabela was beautiful. The town was tiny, with a white sand beach that stretched out for what looked like forever. There were palm trees and the water was a beautiful clear blue. We had lunch when we arrived after checking into the hotel and then we had a free hour which most of us spent on the beach. Afterwords we went snorkeling. Being the kultz that I am, I managed to trip getting out of the boat on to a lava field bordering the bay in which we were snorkeling. It was not until i was swimming around with Marine Iguanas, sharks, and eagle rays that i realized that i had tore about half of my nail off of one of my toes and that my fins were hitting the tear in just the right spot to cause pain. Back on the boat i doctored my toe with the first aid kit and then hopped out again with my group to go on an iguana hunt. we hiked through their nesting grounds. There were so many iguanas!! it was incredible to see all of them just chilling, soaking up the sun. I had researched them for a previous class and it was wonderful to be able to see them in the wild. we took our boat to a place our guide knew where penguins had been spotted before. Instead of penguins we saw more boobies.

Wednesday 3/20/13
After breakfast we took a small boat out to explore more lava tunnels. on our way there we encountered many manta rays and sea turtles. After spotting the  second manta ray we convinced our guide to convince the boat driver to stop the boat at the next manta ray so we could jump in and swim with it. And so the next manata we encountered we all jumped overboard and followed it around until it dived. It was awe inspiring to be swimming with something so large. from fin tip to fin tip it was longer  than i am tall. All of the sharks I have swam with have always been about as long as I am tall or smaller so this was something new. Once at the lava tubes we hiked around a bit on top of them. we encountered a male boobie dancing for a female. it was so cool!!! She said yes too. We left them in peace and went to do more snorkeling around and through the lava tubes. Then there was lunch on the boat followed by almost falling out of the boat. we had carefully maneuvered into the cove where we snorkeled. getting out of the cove meant going against some very large waves. it was so much fun. I wanted to go back in and then come back out again. But we sadly did not.

Thursday 3/21/13
Today was our last day and my Volcano day. I was up at 6 for breakfast and then myself and about 11 other students climbed into a rather smelly taxi which then took us to the bottom of volcan siera negra. we then proceeded to hike up the volcano, around the rim of the caldera, and then across a lava field to the top of volcan chico. Total this was 9 km and took about three hours. We stopped at the summit for photos and for a chocolate break.We then hiked the 9 km back down to where the taxi was waiting for us. we all piled in, most of us only in our sports bras, and covered with sweat. we then met up with the rest of the group at an eco lodge for lunch. it was also the home of several giant tortoises  in a breeding center. Lunch was the best food that I have had here. we all ate seconds and thirds. We then were taken on a tour of the breeding center. I met Mickey a 120 year old tortoise and got to feed him a banana. It was the slowest that I've seen anything eat a banana. Then in the pouring rain we dashed from our bus to a cave where we explored soaking wet. We took a moment in the back of the cave to sit and reflect on our trip and our experiences in the Galapagos so far. The moment was ruined by one of our guides who started giggling. And then we all started laughing. we stopped right outside of town to visit with flamingos and watch them eat. My shower back at the hotel was interrupted when the water ran out. With a head full of shampoo i used the little water left over from my hike to rinse my hair. fortunately by that evening the water had been returned to the pipes. This is typical in the galapagos where there is often a shortage of fresh water. I then napped in a hammock until dinner where we were each given our own personal delicious pizzas. The evenign was then spent at a bar on the beach called Casa Rosita. There was a bonfire, more hammocks and live music. On the way there friends and I stopped at a different restaurant where they will add run to batidos for you even though its not on the menu. An oren batifo con rum (oreo milkshake with run) is delicious.

Friday 3/22/13
Today we headed back home to San Cristobal. The school had not told both boats that we were going directly from Isabela to San Cristobal so my boat stopped in Santa Cruz for about ten minutes while we moved form one boat to another. we were then on our way home. It really hit me that I am livign on a tropical island because pulling up to the pier at San Cristobal I was calling the place home. I live on a torpical island in the middle of the pacific ocean on the equator. My life is incredible and i am so thankful for the opportunity to study and live here. waiting for me at the post office was a package from my mother filled with goodies from home. I walked into my house and surprised my host family. They had not been expecting me back until the next day.

This past week has been my first week in my fourth class. Spring break marked the half way point in the semester. Its crazy to think that I have been here this long. It feels like it was just January,but todays the first day of April. Where has the time gone? Yes I still have 11 weeks left here in ecuador total, but time is going by so quickly.

Yesterday for easter a group of about 16 of us got together and took over the kitchen at one of our host houses. we then proceeded to cook easter brunch: 35 scrambled eggs, toast, hash browns, sweet tea, mimosas, and the best cinnamon rolls that I have ever tasted. We all spent the next hour after eating laying on the floor playing with the pet dogs until we had digested enough to move.

The class that I am currently in is called Evolution Medicine and Health, but we changed topics about every 15 minutes. I am not sure what I am supposed to be learning or if i am really learning anything. Our professor is this very nice older doctor. He has hearing issues combined with the fact that his english is not as good as we expect it to be. We can be standing in front of him making eye contact and he still won't hear us or understand the question. we also get off on odd tangents. One day last week we went from talking about water scarcity to talking about oral history traditions in latin american cultures. How? I have no idea.Today we toured a waste water treatment plant, the dump, the recycling center, and the portable water plant that is still under construction.

I think that is a general update of life here. There was an oil spill right out side of the bay yesterday and so swimming is off limits today unless you want to get covered with oil. It was not a big spill but it was significant enough. Besides the oil, life is good. I love it here.

Ciao for now
Elena