¡GaLaPaGoS!

HAPPY MOTHER´S DAY!!

First, sorry to those of you who may have noticed I haven´t really updated this blog, recently, at all...sorry! And I can´t really claim I´m about to either, as I have limited time and access to the interent here in Galapagos, I´m just going to copy and paste a bit about my first 2 days here from an e-mail I just wrote my mom. So I apologize in advance if some of it applies to her and not you! But be certain I´m having the time of my life, but that I still miss you all and very excited to see as many of you as possible when I return to Wisconsin in little less than a month. Well here´s a bit of what my first 2 days in the most incredible place I´ve ever been and may very well be in my entire life have been like:

Galapagos has been amazing so far, everything I´d hoped it could be. After arriving around 9ish yesterday (our flight from quito was at 7:30) we immediately set off doing things. First we went to this place called Los Gemelos which translates into the twins, they were two giiiiant holes in the ground formed naturally around the times the island did because of natural gas buildups...they were really cool and fascinating. Next we went to a turtle farm where we saw around 12 different giant tortoises and found out that they´re really called giant for a reason, they´re humongous. Afterwards we explored this underground natural cave/tunnel. This may have been my favorite part of the day, it felt like we were in the setting of goonies (if you remember that movie) or something out of indiana jones, it was really amazing and I´d never been anywhere like it. We finally made it back to our hostel where we all took it easy and went to bed pretty early after an extremely exhausting but great day. I´m sharing a room with 2 nice and cool ecuadorian guys from our class. This morning we got another early start and went first to a small island called Seymour North, i think, which is all natural park and no human interference. This was really our first exposure to what I pictured Galapagos as, as we saw a huge array of unbelievable animals. As we pulled up and got ashore from the really nice boat which served as a our transport today (and was also nice for laying out on, despite a little sunburn), we were greeted right away by a baby sealion who was only about 3 weeks old and quite adorable. We continued to find other groups of sealions relaxing on the rocks all along the shore. They´re all really cute and lazy, they can only move a little bit before stopping for a nice rest. The most amazing thing about all the wildlife there, and throughout most of the islands for that matter, is that they have never felt threatened because of a lack of natural predators so you can go right up to them and they dont mind. However, one of the frigate birds who was around us when we first got there for whatever reason either thought there may have been something to eat in my hair or just didn´t like me and really scared the hell out of me when it just came down and hit me on the head with its beak. Not like it hurt at all but it just kinda confused me and caught me off guard. Especially since all the rest of the birds seemingly just ignored us. Well after the sealions we checked out some iguanas. There are 3 types, two species of terrestrial iguanas and 1 marine iguana. The land ones are pretty huge and beautifully colored, while the marine ones were a lot littler (at least the ones we saw) and mostly black, but they´re real cool because they´ve naturally adapted to be able to swim and excrete salt water, even though they´re reptiles they can stay under water for close to an hour without breathing! We also saw tons of frigate birds, similar to all those we saw in Puerto Lopez with the split tails, and some of them, only males, had their red necks all puffed up and really really big, were flapping their wings, and making crazy noises to attract females. Quite a peculiar ritual, pretty sure if i ever tried that it would have the opposite effect. Then we finally saw the famous blue footed boobies, and their feet really are very blue. They are pretty funny creatures - with the blue feet, short and stout bodies, and big googly looking eyes. We saw a whole bunch who were guarding nests of eggs and making funny noises. That pretty much wrapped up our tour of that island, aside from the time spent hiking around checking out all the vegetation. So many of the plants are endemic (only grow in galapagos) so you see lots of cool ones, like all the crazy cactuses. After Seymour Norte we got back on the boat (where they served a delicious lunch, first time I can recall that I´ve really enjoyed eating fish) and we went to the most perfect beach I´d ever seen on Isla Santa Cruz, which is the main island as far as human settlement and tourism goes and where we´re staying, but it was ont he far other end of the island away from any human presence. Though the natural settings and scenery weren´t quite as breathtaking as the beach (los frailes) near Pto. Lopez that we went to, the sand was perfectly, gorgeous white and the water was so crystal clear blue that it really seemed green, i guess you could just call it turqoise. Although it´s really cold water (comes from currents from the south) it felt incredibly refreshing and I snorkled for the first time ever. After a few minutes getting used to the equipment I set off with some friends towards some rocky areas where we saw a vast array of large and unique fish, but what really blew my mind was swimming with about 7-8 sharks and then tracking down a sea tortoise. The sharks ranged in size, but one that I saw was probably close to my size I would guess. Seeing one for the first time definately caught me off guard and scared me a bit but after a minute and finding a few more it was really exciting. Seeing the turtle was another thrill, we had been hoping to find one and myself and another girl from Texas were the only 2 to spot it before it swam away. It too was pretty huge, but such a graceful swimmer and beautiful creature. After this adventure we got back on the boats and laid out in the sun on our way back to the port near our hostel, presumingly when I got kinda burnt. The weather here is incredible, unlike Quito (though it´s nearing the end of the rainy season) there hasn´t been a cloud in this bright blue amazing sky, well just a few but they´re beautifuly and fluffy, and it´s been a pretty constant 80´s-90´s. The nights are nice, though still pretty humid and warm. We actually ran into two friends we know from back in Quito who are here with there families, and today is one of their´s birthdays so we´ll probably go out for a bit tonight to celebrate. As always the people organizing our trip are incredibly organized but that hasn´t hindered our trip at all as we´ve already done so many amazing things. In fact, it´s kind of fun to not really know what we´re doing until right before we do it. Our group is about 20 people, 11 or 12 of whom are ecuadorian but so far everyone´s getting along real well and it seems like a great group to be sharing this experience with.

I´ll try to update this again next time I get a chance. Until then, take care everyone and a very happy mother´s day to any mom´s taking the time to read this.

Much love,
Brett