Well, Halloween may have been banned here in all public schools and looked down upon in many areas, but there was still a holiday near October 31 – Dia de los Difuntos, on November 2, so we didn’t have school on Friday!
To take advantage of our lack of classes, Megan, Pedro, Liz, and I (with a lot of help form Megan’s host mom) planned a trip to las Islas de los Galápagos, the Galapagos Islands!
Thanks to my million and 7 (give or take a million) biology classes I’ve had, I’ve heard a lot about the Galapagos Islands and Charles Darwin’s finches and his book Origin of Species, but I never thought I’d actually get to go there.
Still, bright and early, Friday morning, the four of us met at the Quito airport and boarded a plane heading the Galapagos (which, in case you were wondering, are named after the huge Galapagos tortoise species that is on the islands). After making a quickish stop in Guayquil to drop off some passenger and pick others up, our plane took off again for the islands.
Thanks to the time change, we landed on Baltra, a pretty unpopulated island where there used to be a U.S. military base, around 11:00 a.m. The airport was pretty small and we followed all of the other passengers to the entry lines to the Galapagos.
The airport on Baltra, all of it was open to the outside! I guess there is some advantage of not having the crazy snowstorms of Chicago
Well, the entry fee for foreigners to the islands is $100, but only about $10 for nationals. We had heard that since we were students living in Ecuador for a long time, we might be able to sweet-talk the guards to letting us in for $50.
So we got in the “foreigners” line with out Censo cards, which are our ID cards here that say we’re living in Ecuador, and ready with our best Spanish. When we got to the counter, we told the agent that we were students living here, and he told us to go to the “nationals” line! Haha, we felt pretty cool getting to stand in the locals line. So when we got to that agent, we only had to pay $25 to get in. Sweet!
Anyway, we continued through the open-air terminal to meet one of the guides from Hotel Ninfa, the hotel we were staying in that also led tours. We headed to the baggage claim, which was basically a pile of everyone’s luggage. But we got our bags without a problem!
One of the funny things about the Galapagos’ airport is that nearly everyone there is a tourist so I felt no shame at taking pictures of pretty much everything….the only problem was that I had to make sure I had room on my memory card!
Anyway, the guides herded us all onto big busses where we drove through the windy roads of Baltra. I have no idea why the roads were so curvy though because the island is pretty barren looking with few trees. The dirt is brown-red and makes a really cool contrast with the bright blue ocean.
So we finally ended up at a small dock where we all loaded onto some boats to take us across a channel to the island of Santa Cruz, the most populated of the three populated islands in the Galapagos where our hotel was.
From there we were officially introduced to one of our main guides for the weekend, Luis, as well as a bunch of other people of our tour group. Though the group changed slightly day by day, there were usually about 14-20 of us together. Our group was really cool with people from Ecuador (of course), Brazil, Germany, France, China, India and us from the U.S. Our guide spoke all in Spanish, but occasionally he like to throw in the random English words. He loved to say, “buenas pictures.”
So after taking a small bus to Puerto Ayora, the town our hotel was in, we went to the small restaurant area and ate a delicious almuerzo. The cool thing about the package for the trip that we got was that it included our lodging, meals, and tours.
Pedro, me,Megan, and Liz on the bus headed to the Baltra dock!
After lunch we met up with our tour group and headed to the Charles Darwin Research Station where there were lots of Darwin’s finches, crazy cacti, and of course lots of tortoises, including Galapagos!
One of Darwin's finches...maybe I should send my high school bio teacher this pic to show that I remembered at least some of what she taught
The plants and animals on the island are all so crazy-looking and absolutely incredible. Also, since none of the animals had any predators, they’re not scared of humans at all so you can get so close to them! Pretty much the only thing that keeps you from not touching them is Galapagos rules.
The cactus' "leaves" were so flat and big I wanted to give them a high five...except they happened to have ridicuosly long and pointy needles. Well, I guess that is a main characteristic of cacti
We also saw Lonley George, a big turtle who is the last of his species. He’s near 100 years old, but still holding on! The tortoises can actually live well over 100, sometimes 200 years. According to Luis, it’s because they eat a lot, don’t move much, and don’t talk much. He said he can’t live that long because he talks a lot.
Having a staring contest with a tortoise...he won, but I think I gave him a run for his money
So after walking back to the hotel, I got to swim in the pool and then we had a delicious cena! We planned on checking out Puerto Ayora’s nightlife, but decided to take a quick nap first. So we fell asleep a little after 7:30 with plans to wake up at 8:30. However, I kept hitting the snooze button on my trusty alarm clock, and by the time we finally woke up, it was past 10 and none of us could get the energy to go out! So we decided more sleep was the best choice. Haha, it was the most sleep I’ve had in weeks, maybe months!
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