Travels Revisited: Galapagos Islands 2019

I’m getting to bust out my high school level Spanish. It’s kinda fun though, everyone’s really friendly here, its lively on the street, there’s always people talking. Today is travel day to the Galapagos! A 2 hour plane ride, then a bus, then a ferry, then a taxi to Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz-this is the main tourist town, and even so it’s not very busy. I finally had some white fish and it was pretty good. The view from the room is really nice- a small little place next to 2 restaurants- Galápagos Deli and Lo-Lo, we had breakfast at Lo-Lo twice and ice cream at the deli.

Wow the water is so so blue and the air is a great temperature. On our bus we were stopped by an iguana! And on the ferry dock we saw like 50 blue footed boobie birds DIVE into the water at the same time!! It was incredible, I have never seen anything like that. We saw a sea lion eating a fish and swimming around near all the fishing boats. So much wildlife here.

The town is pretty small but it’s cute and they have a lot of nice restaurants- open air ones. And lots of little shops that I need to go gift shopping at. For dinner we went to one of the little restaurants near the entrance of the National Park headquarters with a colleague that is here working with us. I tried a Galápagos beer called Endemic, it’s really good. We turned in early for the night because we’re 2 hours behind normal time here. Overall I’m really excited about even being here, it’s hard to believe that I’m getting to do research here! I’ve never even been to South America and to start it off in some of the coolest places in the world is incredible! August 19th- Monday The real work begins! Monday- today we woke up at 7am and Yu-Fai and I had breakfast at Lo-Lo, just eggs and toast. I didn’t try any of the juices here because I’m worried they’re made with tap water which I shouldn’t be drinking here, unfortunately that means I have to use a lot of bottles. Then we met up at the NP headquarters which is in the same complex as the Charles Darwin research center. We started with a meeting in the morning, a presentation from Yu-Fai to the rangers and managers of the public use section of the park. Then we went for lunch and every lunch here they have a soup and a big meal of rice and chicken or fish maybe sometimes with banana chips or plantains. Then they give you juice but it’s made with tap water so it’s a no go. Lunch is really cheap about 5 dollars. Dinner is where you get pricey pricey-20 or so dollars for dinner. The portions here are really big and a lot of carbs- but I’ve had so much fish it’s amazing.

After lunch we went to our first visitor site- my first field work trip!! We went to Las Grietas- a cliff with a swimming hole at the bottom, there are a lot of people at this site so we’re trying to figure out what they need to learn from the site. The water was very very clear. After the site we went back to the nice nice hotel to change for dinner- we had dinner at the restaurant next to the hotel where we did breakfast- more fish! They love coconut sauce here too. I think the first day of research went really well. Every employee was awesome and really friendly.