Another early morning! This was a big day for us! We were
finally heading to the Galapagos!! :) We arrived at the airport at around 7:30
am and went through all of the things we needed to… you know.. the fun stuff
everyone likes to do when they’re anxious for a trip (yea…right…).
Our flight left Quito around 9:45 and we made a stop in
Guad???? To let people off and pick people up. After about a 40 minute wait to
take off (while listening to some little Ecuadorian kid listen to his ipod and
sing the same song over… and over… and over… and kicking my seat to the rhythm…
yay… :/) We took off for the Galapagos! I read a whole bunch in my book (The
Snowman… great book…!) and had a light meal of a salad with seasoned chicken, a
sweet roll, fruit and a coke. Finally the Islands came into view! :) We flew
into Baltra’s airport, which was literally like a large park pavilion (not a
building, but a shelter) where we
went through “customs” and grabbed our luggage. Then we quickly hurried to the
bus, and packed ourselves in with a whole mess of people. We drove to the other
side of the island (BEAUTIFUL view of the bright blue ocean!) where we hopped
on a ferry that took us across the channel. We met a local kid, named Tanto
(he’s ganna teach us to surf! And show us places around town! Woot!). When we
got to the other side, we quickly grabbed our luggage, and then tracked down 2
taxis to take us to Puerto Ayora! Our driver drove super fast! We drove through
a couple little towns, until we finally reached the city we’re going to be
living in for the next 3 months!
Just driving through, I seriously think I fell in love with
the city. Its not very big, but still seems like it has a ton to do! There are
a lot of shops, cute restaurants, and such. And its all on the coast! We got up
to the station to find our places to live; Deb and I are in a one room part of
a duplex that has a kitchen in a separate building right around the corner. And
the guys are split into 2 rooms. Their place is sweet! It has a beautiful few
of the ocean! But it was HOT when we got here, so we didn’t stay to look around
too much. We quick grabbed our snorkel stuff and headed to the beach right on
the stations property! The water was perfect! Cool and refreshing; a perfect
temperature to cool me down after sweating soooo much coming in! My goggles
kept fogging up (a problem we hopefully fixed tonight using a lighter and
toothpaste!) so I didn’t get to see much (definitely tore up my feet on the
rocks though! I’ll get the snorkeling thing down by the end of the summer!
After we had all cooled down, we walked back to our rooms to change and then
walked around the station to find where we would each be working. The
Entomology lab has a sweet roof that we’ve decided we’re having barbeques and
dance parties on haha. We walked around and looked at all of the enclosed
animals (tortoises, iguanas, BABY tortoises!) When we came up to Lonesome
George (a huge male tortoise enclosed with a bunch of females), we saw an
American man with his daughter. He was doing research and the BBC was
documenting it for a series called “Galapagos in Detail”. Turns out he knows
Dr. Dave Lonzarich (for all of you UWEC Biology students!) and he told us
(brace yourselves… this is SUPER EXCITING!!) in a couple of weeks… SIR DAVID
ATTENBOROUGH will be on the islands!!! All of us (except for Jon, who wasn’t
sure who he was… geography major…) freaked out!! We got sooo excited! We hope
we get to see him!! :D For those of you who don’t know who he is, he does the
documentaries like Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Frozen Planet, etc… EPIC!! After
freaking the heck out for awhile… we decided to walk into town to look around
and grab some diiner! We went to this restaurant (Ashley should know which one…
it has her bananas haha) and it turns out that our friend Tanto’s mom owns it!!
Had a lovely dinner of pollo apansado (breaded chicken), papas fritas (french
fries), una salada (a salad), y baditos de mora (raspberry shake)!
We then had to go and get groceries! So we went to the
supermarket and grabbed a few things to tie us over for awhile! Then with our
bags in hand, walked all the way back to our rooms (most of the walk was in the
dark… note to self… bring a flashlight next time…). We put our stuff away,
unpacked our luggage, went to the guys room to check it out again and have Joe
(hopefully) defog our goggles for tomorrow! Since it’s a Sunday, we don’t have
to work! So we’re going to head out to do some more snorkeling and then looking
around the city! :) Finally in my home for the next 3 months… and I love it! :)
xx
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