Highlands trip!

Heinke, my botany professor, has been pushing her luck. She has that whole, I'm from Germany/I don't shave my pits/I have the coolest jewelry you've ever seen thing going for her, but she has been too much from the beginning. I am sitting here in the Galapagos islands doing more work over the course of three days than I ever care to in a semester. To top it off, everyone failed her quiz and she complained to administration that we were stupid. Sorry, Heinke. But not really. Because your lectures suck.

So instead of celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday with all of San Cristobal, we were hiking in the highlands and doing an educational field trip examining plants or whatever. If it weren't probably the coolest thing that I've done so far on this island, I would have thrown her off the top of the volcano and named all the vegetation zones that she would have been rollin on through... Not really though! She is actually kind of cool and hardcore, which I appreciate. I would just rather have her as my friend than as my professor.

On to the amazing stuff!

So we went on a bus and headed on up to El junco near the top of the volcano. I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before, but riding on a bus up a volcano is probably the most fun, dangerous, and motion-sickness inducing experience ever. It's like being on a roller coaster that someone has been decapitated on before. We did it a lot in Quito and I felt mostly like I was going to die, or that we would get stuck in the mud, or we would just rock too much to the right and tumble on down the volcano and explode at the bottom. On the way there, the vegetation changed completely.

In town, where I live, is very close to a beach and it is pretty populated. The zones that I live in are the littoral (coastal) zones and the arid zone which is a bit higher up. So, the vegetation is mostly low trees, cactuses, stuff like that. But when you travel higher, there are different moisture/percipitation levels and that paired with the elevation and that equals amazing jungle like environment complete with lagoons and waterfalls and tall trees and stuff. And it is away from civilization. The Charles Darwin Foundation is doing research scattered all over the place - due to habitat destruction, introduced/invasive species, and the overexploitation of resources, there are species here that are reaching critically low population levels and they do what they can to lessen the blow of human disturbance. There are nurseries all over the place for indigenous plant species so that they can repopulate the area. Here is a picture of the nurseries. Aww.

The huge problem on the Galapagos is the mora, or the blackberry. It is an invasive specie, which means that it spreads quickly on its own and outcompetes the native and endemic species for resources. Volunteers have been trying to eradicate the mora in certain areas, all done by hand. They are starting a sustainable program this October that eradicates the mora and makes marmalade out of the berries at the same time to sell to tourists. Las moras son muy ricas :) mmmm. We ate them throughout our hike. Speaking of eating delicious island fruit, in April and May I am going hiking in the highlands every day because that's fruit season! There are going to be Galapagos guayabas (I have to take a picture of this fruit, so delicious yet so, so weird) and naranjas and bananas and passionfruits mmm. We can just pick them off the trees as we walk. Below is a banana tree and that weird dark red thing is it's flower! It's one of the only plant species whose fruits grow up from it's flower. :) P.S. Bananas are not indigenous to the Galapagos!

So after walking around for a little bit we went back in the bus to the tippity top area to see the powerplant windmills. Yeah! Ecuadorians for alternative energy! It's awesome. There are three windmills now, they are strategically placed on a certain point (there was another windier spot but they were unable to put them there because they would disrupt the frigate bird nests). They are 51 meters high (oooooo) and it provides 40% of the energy for San Cristobal (aaahhhh).

Here are Becky and I being ridiculous near the windmills. Sorry I don't have a picture of those. They look like regular alternative energy windmills.

THEN we went to el junco. I am just going to copy and paste a chunk from my field report and tell you about that -

El junco is a fresh lake in the highlands of San Cristobal and is the only naturally formed fresh water area on all of the Galapagos Islands. This lake is evidence that there were once glaciers on San Cristobal. There was debate on whether or not the lake was retrieving water from the ocean, but through a mold demonstration, researchers were able to prove that it does not. El junco always has fresh water, even during serious droughts. This may be because the area has a lot of moisture and water is constantly cycling via evaporation and precipitation.
Recently, the introduced fish species telapia was found in the lake, numbering at about 40,000. The fish, most popularly raised through aquaculture, is an omnivore usually fed only algae. However, in El junco, the telapia were feeding off of the crustaceans that were living in the lake and it was decided that they should be eradicated. So, researchers extracted a poison from the roots of barbascos, a tree found in the Amazon. Because they wanted to leave the crustaceans unharmed, researchers tested the crustacean’s reactions to the poison over a three month period. They decided that the barbasco poison harmed only the fish in the lake, and were able to remove the species.
The area surrounding the lake was once covered by the invasive blackberry species that have recently been removed by hand by volunteers. Also, there are plots located in the area with patches of miconia in order to test how feasible it would be to grow the native miconia. There needs to be more species richness so that invaders do not take over the area.
From this view, we were able to see a couple of greenhouses in the lower vegetation zones. Greenhouses are reducing the amount of insects, are able to grow food all year round, and in turn lessening the Galapagueñan dependency on mainland shipments of tomatoes and other staples. There are eleven greenhouses on Santa Cruz, two on Floreana, and two on San Cristobal with three on the way.

Then we went to a campground which was a really neat set up, but it was too dark out by that time to take any cool pictures. We had a campfire and talked about the ghost stories and legends of san cristobal. Heinke (my professor) and her partner John shared with us some of their own really freaky ghost stories. She believes in ghosts! I think that's so weird and really cool at the same time because she is a scientist. To be spiritual and to be scientific is a happy medium. A few of us wandered away from the campfire and checked out the stars. This is one of the things I was so excited for! I am away from the mainland, away from society and pop culture and tall buildings with light pollution - and here are the stars, the brightest and clearest I have ever seen them. All the constellations are different - I can see all of Orien and I have to really look for the Big Dipper but the rest are pretty much different. We are going to try to learn them while we are here. We laid down in the grass for a good while and Scott led us through a guided meditation, which always makes me wish that my entire life was one giant guided meditation. It was an amazing day!