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Published: January 31st 2010
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Baby Tortoises
Tortoise Breeding Center, Puerto Ayora What a fabulous week. Other than lack of sleep due to sailing at night and a lack of baked goods on the boat because of a broken oven (a blessing in disguise), I have no complaints! Lidia even got the cook to have his brother bake me a birthday cake on his boat the last night! The diversity of wildlife still overwhelms me, and I definitely saw nature in action, from mating turtles to sea lion pup carcasses it was quite an eye opener. The sadest was my new best friends, the sea lion pups. There mother leaves them for days at a time to go fishing and the pups wait with the rest of the group for her return. However, while she is gone (and if the mother is eaten by a shark or meets another unfortunate end) the other sea lions do not adopt the little guy and he waits patiently on the beach for her return without food. We saw a few that you could tell their mom had been gone for a while and others where all you saw was the remains )skin and all). It was incredibly sad, but the park service does not interfere with
Prickly Pear Cactus
Tortoise Breeding Center, Puerto Ayora nature (the sea turtle we rescued was an exception), so that is life. Luckily there was way more wildlife flurishing! I warning to anyone thinking of making the trip (and I totally recomend it), try not to go during El Nino (and possibly the year after). The islands are really affected by it because the amount of algea and fish severely decreases, due to the increased temperature of the water, and a large portion of the sea lion and marine iguana die because of lack of food.
I had a little scare yesterday when I was snorkeling and saw a young fur seal (actually a sea lion because it has ears) and a reef shark (slightly bigger than the fur seal) in very close proximity. Imagine my astonishment when the fur seal started chasing the shark, and the shark was trying to get away! Quite a sight, someone needs to teach that fur seal who not to mess with. I got a picture of the two in the same frame, but I don´t think the fur seal was in pursuit yet. That afternoon a 3 meter (10 foot) bull shark was swimming around our boat, hopefully the little guy
Me and Giant Tortoise
Used to be a pet! Probably about 80 years old. was long gone by then!
Yesterday we saw blue footed boobies doing their courtship dance where the male raises its feathers and points at the sky (I think called pointing), then raises one foot, then the other. The female watches and moves closer if she is interested. It was pretty cute. We also saw tons of Frigate birds nesting (some with eggs and some with babies), and we saw a male ¨puffing¨, where it puffs out the red sack under its chin and sits with it pointed to the sky for up to three days (at which time it is utterly exhausted, dehydrated and hungry), anxiously awaiting a female to choose him to mate. When a female gets close he makes noise and waves its bright red chest to get her attention. If she choses him, he then collects sticks (once he has recovered from his vigil), which he brings to her to make the nest. We also saw a frigate bird in action as a bird of prey...it was chasing another bird to steal the fish that the bird had caught. He did not succeed, but if he had stopped the bird he would have forced it to
Land iguana smiling for the camera
They definitely sensed us and seemed to pose! Plaza Sur regurgetate the fish, which it would then take. Quite the sophisticated hunters! Finally, this morning around 6am before we headed to the airport, we went to Black Turtle Cove where we saw lots of sea turtles, a couple baby reef sharkes, and sea turtles attempting to mate. Actually, with one of the males, the female was trying to hold him off from climbing on because she was probably tired. I guess there are 4 times as many males than females, so it is hard work getting away from the males.
Obviously my highlight was the animals, but the vegetation was facinating as well, often because of the lack there of, it is not the typical island paradise, but actually quite the opposite. The islands are much younger than most parts of the world, formed by volcanic eroptions at a hotspot at the western most part of the archaepelogo 1million to 5 million years ago depending on the island. As the plates moved, the island was moved east off the hot spot and new islands (and tons of islets) began to form. The vegetation on the islands depends on their age, with the higher areas of the volcanoes being the
Plaza Sur
Red and green short bushes make a pretty picture most lush. On Bartolome Island, one of the newer islands and first we visited, we hiked to the top of one volcano and the only vegetation was dispersed white pioneer plants, which created an interesting effect with the black volcanic rock. On that island there were a few small lava lizards and some bright sally lightfoot crabs. As we moved to some of the older islands, the vegetation increased, and the amount of plants animals increased. Not only were the lava lizards bigger since there was more food, but there were tall prickly pear cactus, large land and sea iguanas, sea lions and tons of birds among other things. It was fascinating to how species changed from island to island.
Last night we finished our cruise off with some Merengue and Salsa lessons from two of the crew. It was a lot of fun, but hard work after a week of eating and lounging around most of the time. I did alright with the Merengue because I had a leader, but the Salsa was a bad showing, hopefully I will be better at the Argentinian Tango! Currently I am waiting at the airport for my red eye to Santiago,
then I fly to Buenos Aires in the morning. I have learned that there are a number of volunteers starting tomorrow so there is a group orientation tomorrow afternoon. Fingers crossed for some fun folks to explore BA with! I hope all is well stateside. I hope to get some pictures up in Buenos Aires as I took about 1600 in 9 days.
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Henry
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Great blog
Sounds like a really great trip. You need to pick up to pace. 1600 in 9 days is very light. Only 177 a day. You can do better. I love images. Please share them when you get back Take care Henry