la alba al junco

This morning we woke up at 4:45am to go to the highlands to watch la alba - the sunrise - at El junco which is the fresh water lagoon on San Cristobal. My host father woke up early with us to get us the taxi which was so awesome of him. Everyone met up outside my house to disembark and the most random people showed up from our group. It was awesome - I just had this thought that that would be a cool idea and made an announcement and it turned out that a handful of people were up for it. I stayed up til 2ish writing my 10 pager (how wonderful it is to be slammed with work the last few days in the Galapagos) which I guess I'll be finishing today and studying for my final. Then I went home, took a catnap and waited around for whoever to show up. Right before we took off, Elektra's mom wandered around the corner in the dark saying "Can I come?" ...that was pretty cute. Then we drove around for stragglers and picked up Aubrey and then took off towards El junco.
I love driving in the highlands at night. We're on virtually uninhabited islands, 400 miles away from the mainland, so you can only imagine what the stars look like. And I'm really going to miss riding in the back of a truck to get to wherever you can't walk to. From the distance you could see the sun starting to rise. We were pretty excited... As we got closer, though, it started getting really cloudy and by the time we got there we were pretty much standing inside of a cloud. Hahaha. Figures. We walked around for a bit, went to the water, Scott fell in, took some pictures, and headed back home. The ride back was even prettier, because you can see different high points of the island, the sun was still rising and it was still kind of cool out (80ish...) and you get a view of the whole coastal town. Bueno.

The case of the pollo

So I just got back from amazing vacaciones which I will update on ASAP !!
But here is a little story until then.

Breakfast this morning with my host father, 'Tonyo' (aka Antonio) as follows:

[english translation]


A: Do you have a chicken?
Me: Not that I'm aware of.
A: Are you sure? There was a chicken in your room for like 4 or 5 days.
Me: Like... a dead one?
A: No, it was alive. It was pretty skinny when I found it.
Me: Seriously?
A: Yes. We were just wondering if it was yours, or if you thought it was yours. The neighbor a couple houses down said that she was missing a chicken.
(This confuses me. How could the neighbor possibly know that she is missing a chicken? They spend their days roaming the streets. No coops.)
Me: Well, it wasn't my chicken. How do you think it got there?
A: We have no idea! Maybe you shut your door without realizing there was a chicken in there?
Me: Tonyo, I would definitely be aware of a chicken in my bedroom before closing the door.
A: I just don't know. Genesis heard something from your room, and when I opened the door, the chicken shot right out of there, skinny and about to die. There were feathers all over the place!
Me: ......................................

Isabela

We went to Isla Isabela last week. So nice to be on a different island! Isabela is the largest island in the archipelago and it's practically uninhabited compared to the other inhabited islands. Population is around 2000 I think.

Highlights include:

The bars! We walked along some little villagey roads alongside the beach and the houses looked like everyone was sleeping. We randomly walked into someone's backyard and BAM! Sweeeet outdoor bar alongside the beach complete with amazing view of the milky way and latin songs that I can actually sing to. Ahh! Awesome! Being completely broke at the time, I did what any respectable Boston girl would do and brought my own box of wine in my purse and refilled my glass throughout the evening...

The mangroves! They are a shrub (I guess)... They grow in coastal areas and some species live in the water in the littoral zone and act as nurseries for fish, shrimp, and seahorses. We snorkeled there a few times and the view was so beautiful with a view of the volcanos/highlands in the distance, the sunlight reflecting off the water and making the clouds look pretty (it rained for the first time in three months when we arrived in Isabela. Really pretty clouds were streaking the sky) We did transects there. I saw an octopus. Mangrove highlight.

The highlands! Highlands are my favorite because they remind me of the jungle and seeing banana trees as part of your everyday life makes me feel at peace with the world. Really thick vegetation, lots more finches, I can dig it. We did a deisel hike through the highlands, saw a crater that is the 2nd largest volcano crater in the world, and then kept on hiking through some lava flows and then reached a point that was so incredible - we could see a few other islands from this point and the ocean was to our left and vegetation growing through the lava flow to our right. This is the picture where I'm laying down on the rocks.

There's also the wall of tears. Isabela was one of the islands that housed prisoners. They really didn't have much for them to do, so they spent some time building this absolutely pointless wall made from the heavy basalt volcanic rocks. Many of them died because they weren't really given water or food or any kind of reasonable/healthy labor hours.



Tomorrow is Easter. This past week, with Holy Thursday/Good Friday/ Easter sunday is called La semana de santa. People sing outside in their backyards, there was some kind of solemn parade last night that was really emotional for the locals, and all day yesterday (Friday) the Catholics fasted. It's great being here, but tomorrow I'm def going to be thinking of Easter goodness including but not limited to:

• Seeing my family!!!!
• Auntie Jackie's asparagus and cheese
• Auntie Jackie's layer salad
• Wrights desserts AND Samantha's desserts
• Missing a family holiday where I can finally legally drink! wtf!
• Roooooasted lamb
• Bursting at the seams with easter food and taking a nap.

mmmm. miss you guys.

<3

6 weeks?!

A phrase that has dawned on everyone in our group this past week. We're going to go nuts... We have a few days left of our current modules (I am now on Intro to Marine Life) and then we are going to Isabela for a week and return with a 5 day holiday and then we will be touring a few of the islands. After that, we only have a couple weeks left! I'm so freaked out!

In other news, my dreds started molding, so I cut probably a foot of hair off. It was a liberating feeling. You couldn't even tell that I had dreads in the first place and they are itchy and stinky. It was something that I've always wanted to do, and having short hair was something I've always wanted to try and it's soo great having short hair in a hot place :)

For our marine class, we have been going snorkeling in a bunch of cool areas. Our professor was the director of research at the Charles Darwin Research Center for years before he started regularly teaching so we have got the in as far as going to prohibited parts of the islands goes. He also has terrible communication skills and he is deaf, which makes for interesting field trips, as he constantly ignores our questions - "Gunter, what are we doing. Where are we going. Earth to Gunter." Dos dias pasado, we went to a place that hasn't even been officially named yet, barely any traffic going through this place. I felt like an explorer. We were surveying the area and then writing proposals on whether or not the center should allow the area to be a tourist spot. So we hiked around, went snorkeling, took some notes... I vote no for tourism. For a few reasons, but most importantly that it's a nesting area for endangered tortugas marinas.

Here are a few creeper shots from Scott:

<-- picked the worst shoes to go hiking in! here's brett and i getting back on the boat - literally had no where to dock to so we all jumped off brittle ah-ah lava and onto the boat.

This next picture is the ohwee ohwee lava flow - i have no idea if that's even how you pronounce it. basically, the ah ah lava is brittle and sharp, and named after the ah ah lava in Hawaii (the indigineous Hawaiians would walk over the rock barefoot and go "ah! ah! ah!"

The other kind of lava is smoother and you can see the flows better. This one had less gas bubbles trapped inside as it was cooling down. Millions of years ago.

Here's where we first landed, up behind me is the turtle nesting area and we snorkeled over by the huge rock on the left. It was a beautiful place and it's amazing to think that no one ever goes there. The snorkeling was cool because there were so many schools of fish and they were a lot bigger than I've ever seen and a lot of them were grazing. This marine class has really opened up a new world... A lot of people think half the experience of the Galapagos is being underwater. Snorkeling is so relaxing - the water is pretty warm and you just float there with your snorkel and chill in Galapaguenan goodness. There is only one significant coral reef I think, but there is brightly colored algae that covers the rocks that is very beautiful. My new favorite spot is a 20 minute walk down the street from the uni which is a beautiful snorkeling area with huge rocks and caves and crazy fish. I really want to see a sea horse and a frog fish before I leave. Frog fish look like dead tufts of seaweed floating above the ocean floor but all the little tufts are actually their fins. I've been watching Blue Planet - just like Planet Earth (also narrated by d. attenborough <3) align="left">

I wrote a bunch more but apparently it got deleted - just me blah blahing about snorkeling and sea life. Oh well. Chau guys ! :)

feliz dia de san patricio

hola!

it came to my attention yesterday morning at breakfast with antonio, my host father...
Ecuador doesn't celebrate st. pattys! Our group collectively decided to inform everyone about this important holiday, fighting our hardest through the language barrier.
I think that my translation yesterday sounded something like this:
"It is a very important day for us. For good luck we wear green and drink a lot of beers. It has a small green man who is magic and likes plants with four flowers. Understand? Very important."
Hopefully he got the jist of it.

By the end of the night we had drank all the servesas the bar had, we made all of our Ecuadorian friends go home to change into green and come back, two girls were throwing all their st. patty's day fun up in the street and one of them was eventually carried home by the dive instructor (all the skeevi ecuadorians crowding around).
and i proposed to carlos, again. he said no, again. we're cool though.
aaand we played traditional american college student drinking games by the ocean. Ever heard of 21? that's a good one.

and the night ended successfully around 5am with me hammocking peacefully outside my bedroom. good times had by all. :)

french toast

For breakfast one day, my roommate Amanda and I made french toast and homefries for our homestay family.

Our family was really excited that we wanted to spend more time with them and to try American food! One day I asked them if they liked American food and they said "Oh yes, we love french fries and hamburgers". Sigh. That is what I figured they thought American food was like, and I guess that is what our country projects. What food is really American, anyway?
My host mother hovered over us with a little notebook/recipe book and wrote down every little thing that we did (even the mistakes) - it was so cute. I def want to get some of her recipes as well.
So we put everything out in platters so people could help themselves and they just kind of blinked and smiled at us, expectantly and hungrily. Haha. Yeah. In Ecuador, as I'm sure with many south american countries, you get served with your plate already full. So we served them, realized we forgot the juice, and my host sister hated everything, and my host mother hasn't used the maple syrup since. And then we played Bingo - All in all a very successful Sunday morning.

homesick

dear mom&dad,

if you really, truly love me, you would send me a care package including but not limited to:
gatorade packets of the lemon-lime variety, nutella, samoa cookies, those fettuccini alfredo packets, and the little lunchable size things of motts regularly sweetened applesauce (non cinnamon), every episode of the l word and ocean girl, and a digestive tract cleanser. and a kitten.

love and miss,
your daughter, Alex