Eduardo, technician at the station, leading the way

Today we walked to the beach for the second time. It doesn’t stop to impress me. It’s only a 45 minute walk from the station but it’s muddy and rocky and there is cactus(cacti?) and cliffs at the end that you need to watch out for..

I think the sound effects are what gets me the most. The sound of the ocean waves backing up and crashing into the massive rocks and the screeching sound of the seagulls and frigate birds makes for an incredibly dramatic scene.

There are many birds near the cliffs since they like nesting here. We saw blue-footed boobies, Nazca boobies (enmascarado), seagulls, tropical birds, petrels and frigate birds.

Seagull

Nazca boobie (piquero enmascarado)

Tropical bird with baby

We walked down a cliff and ran into a tropical bird with it’s baby. We stayed away so it wouldn’t attack us and make us fall down. So cute!

The first time we went on this walk, we saw a whale. It was awesome because nobody was anticipating seeing one. No one  except this German lady who kept saying that she wanted to see whales and she was the one who spotted it! The whale was pretty far away but we were able to see it’s tail and water coming out of it’s blowhole. I wasn’t fast enough to take a picture of it.

 You can’t really bathe in the water in this area since it’s really rocky and the waves are massive. Instead, we bathe in a little lagoon that forms from a river outlet. The water is freezing as usual but it feels nice after this extremely humid walk. Frigate birds also use this lagoon to rinse off their wings from the salty seawater. Apparently they can only catch their food, fish, from the surface of the ocean but they can’t dive in since they would become far too heavy to fly back up. So they hang around other hard-working birds such as the boobies and wait for the right moment to steal fish from them.

Our trusty guard dogs came with us as well. They were quite exhausted. My dog would have had a heart attack.

Negro Obama (that's his full name)

My first point of entry into Galapagos was the town of Puerto Barquerizo Moreno, the political capital of the islands. This is a nice quiet town (compared to the more touristy Santa Cruz) of ~8,000 with nice beaches and places to eat and have fun.

Sea lions are EVERYWHERE.

Unfortunately, their poop smell is also omnipresent.

Soon after arriving I took a taxi ($20 one way) into the biological station where I would be staying and doing most of my work. In approximately 45 minutes, we transitioned from the hot and sunny coast environment into the HUMID, cloudy and cooler climate of the highlands. And I know humid. I’ve lived in Managua and HOUSTON for Christ sakes. Well, I thought I knew humid… this is a “mold your passport even if it’s inside your backpack in a plastic bag” kind of place. Nothing ever dries and the sun appears about 2 or 3 times a week for a few hours around noon.

This station is called Jatun Sacha (meaning big forest in Quechua). The same organization has 4 other similar stations around Ecuador. The station is on a 200 hectare property and can host up to 70 volunteers. Right now, there are around 35 volunteers but when I arrived last week there were only 18. It fluctuates from day to day. There are British, French, Finish, Swiss, Russian, Canadians, people from the US of course, and a LOT of Germans.

Here  is a picture of the house where I’m staying. You sleep in mosquito nets, rubber boots are essential and spiders are everywhere. You get used to it pretty quickly.

Some of the activities I have partaken on include: clearing fields of invasive species (with machete), making holes and planting endemic coffee, collecting endemic coffee seeds, making beds for the vegetable garden, and cooking. Yes, every week we need to sign up for kitchen duty. Since there is only 1 cook, Dona Yadira, for 30 or so people, she always welcomes help.