Hayley 'T-shirt' en la Galapagos

Flying over the Galapagos as you arrive is a little disconcerting as the islands just appear to be big, uninhabitable volcanic rocks jutting out of the sea. I was living on Santa Cruz, the most inhabited island, with a lady called Aureola, who is the Avon lady of the Galapagos (no joke!) and is completely 100% off her rocker!! But in a very funny good way (for example I got rudely awoken on xmas day by her bashing me over the head with my christmas present and laughing to herself - luckily it was soft!). I would describe her as a cross between an owl and the Godfather.
For the first month I lived with two other volunteers Claire and Alex, and started my teaching english position at the Colegio Nacional Galapagos, teaching kids from 11 to 17. I absolutely loved my school and the kids are adorable/diabolitos (little devils), and at times very difficult to control! On my first day at the school I was shoved in a taxi pick up-truck (along with the rest of my class) and we were all taken out to a US research ship in the bay, where I discovered I was the translator for a school trip about el niño phenomenon, thermoclines and tsunami warning systems, which I have to say was a little beyond my spanish skills at the time (and maybe still is!). After the trip Nuria, the teacher I team taught with most of the time, informed me that she had decided to go to the mainland for a week, and so I was to take all her classes alone for the next week (bear in mind my spanish was pretty shoddy at the time, the kids can pretty much only say ´I love you teacher´ in english, and I had only met one class!). I didn't really mind and it went pretty well I think, but I was very glad when Nuria came back!! I also worked with another teacher called Luz, was given a flower everyday by a little boy called Alex and wanted to adopt a little boy called Gonzalo who I call my pequeño hombre (my little man)! I really felt I made a difference at the school and made some really good friendships with many students and especially Nuria, it was a really different experience and seemed much more full of life than english schools and age differences are a lot less distinct. In Ecuador everyone is late for everything, and often don't show up at all - this goes for teachers too!!
In the first month Claire and I managed to find a cheap tour around the islands north of Santa Cruz (which are supposed to be the best, most diverse and come with the least seasickness!) and it was great, a totally different experience to actually living in the Galapagos though. We went to a Giant Tortoise reserve, walked through lava tunnels, and visited islas Rabida, Sombrero Chino, Bartolome, Santiago, and Seymour. Between the islands there are about 8 different colours of sand, we saw an abundance of sea lions (and snorkelled with them and penguins too - yes it was that cold, although someone tried to tell me that they were ´warm-water´ penguins but I wasn't buying it!), had a Galapagos hawk pose for us (very conveniently hovering about a meter over our heads until everyone had finished taking photos - then flew off!), dodged Marine Iguanas and Lava lizards as there are so many, and spotted Marine turtles and white-tip sharks in the Mangrove swamps.
I also completed my Advanced diving qualification there, swimming with sea lions, Galapagos sharks (cousins of the Great White - but disappointingly just looks like a big reef shark), turtles and schools of Golden and Eagle rays. I also learnt a lot about underwater photography and discovered I am a much better diver whilst taking photos as I am so concentrated on the pictures that I automatically adjust my neutral buoyancy!
The worst thing about Santa Cruz would have to be the bloody cockerels (and dogs), they crow (or bark) all through the night completely regardless of the time and they are bloody everywhere - both are illegal as they are introduced species (and dogs sometimes have tendency to kill sea lions, especially on San Cristobal) but no one seems to care - other than me at 3 in the morning when I'm out in the road in my bedclothes trying to kill next door´s cockerel. The good things include Tortuga bay (a gorgeous white sand beach which turns into a lagoon), Las Grietas (a volcanic fissure between huge rocks in a barren landscape, where you can swim and watch the solitary school of blue parrot fish - who swim up and down it all day), and Pelican Bay, which is a bay where the fishermen bring in, gut and sell the days catch, with sealions at their feet begging for scraps (just like dogs), pelicans hovering behind the sealions trying to beat the sea lions to it, and huge frigate birds hovering overhead, swooping in to steal whatever they can at opportune moments! There is also a myth on the island that there is a natural spring in Pelican bay, and anyone who drinks the water from this spring will never truly be able to leave the Galapagos and will eventually be drawn back there. The day before I left one of my local friends told me he spiked my hot chocolate one day with Pelican Bay water - and so they all knew that I will be coming back! Maybe that's why I felt so strange when I left!!
We celebrated Alex´s 18th with a surprise party at the Captain´s bar, which overlooks the natural Salt flats in the middle of nowhere (you have to catch a water taxi to get there), and also discovered the Ecuadorian birthday tradition of pushing the persons face into their own birthday cake - and quite violently! I would like to take this tradition back home with me, but I'm not sure how well it would be received! And its only really worth it if there´s icing on it!! I also managed to arrange a spanish-english lesson exchange with a castelleno teacher at my school, and so my spanish was gradually improving - and I could even (mostly) understand Aureola, with her Godfather - accented spanish (complete with hand gestures!).
Claire and I also took the ferry over to Isabela for a weekend, which is the biggest island in the archipelago but only inhabited by about 2000 people, it has one white sand road, lots of volcanos, and not much else. We took a horse ride to the top of Volcan Sierra Negra and then hiked to the top of volcan Chico, it was great except the horses were slightly unhinged and I was sure I was going to lose either some teeth or a limb at many points during the ride, and I basically crippled for 2-3 days afterwards - as I had unwittingly used muscles I didn't know I had!
Although I missed everyone very much at Christmas I still had a great time (sorry!), we had a nice but unorthodox christmas dinner, and did lots of Salsa in the disco (not as crap as it sounds guys!), I was taught how to salsa (except I'm a little hazy on the steps!) but I can do lifts and twirls and drops and things I never thought possible - its amazing what a caiperhenia can do for you! I also attended a Quinerta (?) which is a 15 year old girls birthday party/ communion celebration which is a BIG deal out here - it was on the same scale as a UK wedding! And I also went to a wedding, which was interesting and after the vows everyone in the congregation goes and hugs everyone else saying ´La Paz´ which means ´peace´ - and the vicar was 45 mins late and nobody batted an eyelid!
I arrived back in Quito on the 30th to see Neil. It was really strange to physically see each other again, and he looked like a giant to me as I had only really associated with people of a similar size to me for 2 months - I felt like a borrower! We went to spend New Year with a local family he had met in Quito, with 3 lovely children, and in keeping with tradition we burned muñecas (human effigies - along the lines of guy fawks dolls) in the streets along with the rest of the population, and drank the moonshine that Neil had been working on for the last month. We then took a short trip into the Ecuadorian cloud-forests for a few days of (very rainy) hiking and hummingbird watching, and intend to leave for Colombia in a couple of days! Sorry this took so long everyone, but blogs are fast becoming the bane of my life! Hope you enjoy the pictures and GET WELL SOON FELIX!! xxxx

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