Island Vida

Life in the galapagos island cannot be beat! I was there for 3 weeks and what a crazy three weeks they were! First of all, i was on an eight day boat cruise and we visited a ton of islands and i was on the boat without the professors, just our TA javier. hellooo party boat...no seriously, like all the noisy people who did and didnt party a lot were on our boat and most of the quieter kids who didnt really go out as much were on the other. interesting coincidence. especially when people who put down who they wanted to room with didnt get who they wanted, in the case of AB and Katie. everyone else who put down someone got to room with that person. regardless of how they split it though, my boat the yate amigo still felt kind of gyped out of our learning , because as much as we learned from javier and hes a great ta and everything, he still is a ta and joe and catherine still our the professors. there´was two of them and we had two boats, and they were both on one of the boats. we had a talk with them about this, we felt like we were missing out on learning and how we suggested they either split and put one prof on each boat next year or get a boat where everyone can be on it. so that was a fun talk...and then we busted out the tequila and did shots with them...and then went over to the other boat guantanamera to hang out with our friends on the other boat. it was fun we danced and got to have capiorona which is like a brazilian mojito, and then we went back to the amigo, and then the other group swam over and came and hung out with us on our boat and we just listened to guitar. then they left, and the people on my boat went skinny dipping off the dingy boat in the middle of the oceean. soooo much fun! anyways though im out of order here a little bit.

the first day we were on santa cruz island, and we visited the charles darwin center where there were lots of tortoises and land iguanas and people living on that island. then we came back for our first nite on the boat. i roomed with molly, in this tiny tiny cabin that had bunk beds, a bathroom and very little walk room. there were five tourists on our boat also , a couple from germany, a couple from england or something and another girl from engand or something. our boat was really cool, we could go up on the roof if we wanted so that was a fun place to go tan and read.

can´t remember what islands we all visited right now, but will fill in the rest of what we did.

things i saw included lots of flowers, land iguanas, marine iguanas, galapagos sea lions, sea turtles, white tipped sharks, galapagos sharks, green sea urchins, anemoneas, corals, tons of fish like razor surgeon fish, mooreish idols-if you´ve seen finding nemo, it was the type of fish Gil is, damselfish, parrotfish, mexican hogfish and a ton of others. also spotted eagle rays and manta rays. i saw manta rays jumping out of the water and doing backflips from the bow of our boat one night it was incredible. additionally i saw lots and lots of blue footed boobies, red billed tropic birds, american oystercatchers.my favorite, storm petrols, herons, lava lizards, barnacles, galapagos penguins, brown pelicans, finches and more.

cool things on our boat included great food, reading up on the roof and seeing the stars from the roof, going snorkleling tons of times, getting to swim with sea lions, galapagos penguins, sea turtles, and sharks!

we arrived at san cristobal for our home stays after the boat cruise,and stayed with host families. i was with katie and we had a great host family consisting of host dad efraim, host mom sandra and host sister gabi who was ten. they lived in a nice house with hammock, and katie and i shared a room. the first niight there a wasp was building a nest on the showerhead, probably because there was a window with no pane in the bathroom. we fixed that the next morning.it was nice though and they were really nice. my breakfasts and dinners were really good. the last nite they were teaching us dances of ecaador and my host mom did our hair up all fancy shmancy.
we also had twoo dogs which was fun. the only downside was we lived far away, mas arriba.

daily schedule for school on san cristobal looked like this;
lecture in the am, lunch as 12 30 at sula sula , really close to school, lecture 4, dinner at 7 and dinners and lunches were set up for us so thats where we would go every day until we switched over to having dinners at our host familys. there was a rotation of three restaurants, calypso, miramar and cormorant that we would go to . sula sula was really nice, run by a woman and her daughter , really good food and variety, only downside was the waiting.

then when we started doing our research projects , we had lecture only one a day for the first couple, and then we had none so we could focus on our projects. the school was really really nice, and right across from it was the beach, so nice to go for a dip before class in the afternoon. my research projects was on sea lion behaviour and i worked with molly. we initially wanted to compare a more human disturbed site , malecon to a less disturbed or populated area the loberia. well, we did our sampling and the third nite we were out at loberia and realized there were only like 17 sea lions and they were really hard to see even though we had a lantern so we came back for dinner and were kind of freaking out cuz we couldnt do our project if there werent any sea lions at loberia. so we discussed and came up with a plan to take data from inside the the beach area where the sea lions were , bcuz you could go on that beach and a sign recommended staying 4m away from them, so we did that and compared it to behaviours observed from behind the fence out of the sandy beach area. at the malecon there were a ton of sea lions, we counted like 304 one night crazy, and they were smelly and loud but really playful, and one time we were in the beach area right where they were and five of them like came running after us so we jetted and like hopped the fence super fast. there was also this huge fat dominant male sea lion who everytime he would come on the becah the other adult males below him would start running away. very funny. there were other beaches we went to including, corola, and tijeretas. although malecon and playa man across from school werre the ones i frequented most often.

night life in san cristobal was sub par as compared to what one might expect. there were two bars in town and so you either went to one or the other basically. iguana rock and polos. pool was very big in san cristobal and you would see a lot of pool junkies out at night. there was a counting of sea lions every thursday and molly and i got to participate in that prior to our data collecting so we got an idea of distinguishing sea lions and the whole counting process. there also was a marine biologist named judith denkinger there who gave us a lecture on marine mammals, and works with whales. and is also like involved in 10 different marine projects right now . they´re trying to creat a marine mammal research center there and i would love to be able to go back and work there. ill definatly have to hook up now. thats for sure.

per usual i had adventures, me and molly are really, really good at making friends with locals. we made friends with this guy who worked at casa blanca a little touristy restaurant visible right after you get off the boat, and then met his friends and would hang out at his house sometimes. once there was a barbecue which was kinda fun. since san cristobal was such a small island it was hard to not run into people you knew, and that happend very often.

in addition to projects we also had ou marine biology final, last final for the year baby! and so had to study for that, ecept since we were so time budgeted out we only had really one day to study. i spent it studying on the beach, and would go swimming as a break like every hour, the test itself wasnt so bad, and during our field portion we saw a manta ray, and an octopus!!

i filled up my memory card i took so many pics, they´ll be up soon hopefully, though my transfer cord isnt working so that sucks. anyways we have presentations on monday and then i leave either tuesday or wednesday not sure yet for my internships out at puerto lopez,another island. so looking foreward to that. tonite might meet up with our friend from galapagos who actually is in quito for fifteen days, but not sure yet. im just at papaya net right now chilling . manana have to make our presenetation for monday and work on revising papers. i got some cool t shirts in the galapagos, a bag with fish on it, and a sarong deally thing . i was dumb and only brought 100 dollers for the whole trip, so i had to bum a little money but no problem.

also last nite was like a celebration for an opening of a boardwalk and there was live music and we were all dancing in the street it was awesome!!

needless to say i want to return and am not looking happy im back in quito where its fricken freezing. boo. anyways til i write again,
ciao amigos and family!

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