The Voyage of the HMS Moogle

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 01:16:13 GMT

Well, I went to Ecuador for three weeks, spending a week in Quito and two weeks in the Galapagos Islands. I think I'm finally going to take the advice of glimmerz and learn how to use one of these "Livejournal Cut" things, since this entry is pretty long:

Thursday September 7th
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Woke up at 6 AM after sleeping 2-3 hours. Took a plane out of Buffalo to Atlanta. There was no entertainment on this 2-hour flight but they gave me peanut butter and crackers and a Sprite. I had an hour to wait at the Atlanta terminal where I ate some Domino's Pizza and garlic bread. The next flight from Atlanta to Miami was also 2 hours but they had the Smiths singles collection for me to listen to while I played a trivia game against other people on the plane. Each game consisted of 20
questions, awarding you more points the quicker you answered each question. This guy Loki in seat 31A kept winning, but I finally won a game just as the plane was landing. There were no snacks on this flight because there was turbulence most of the way. At one point there was a really sharp drop and the girl sitting behind me screamed at the top of her lungs. It was supposed to be a two hour wait at Miami airport but the flight was delayed 2 & a half hours so I had a beer and tacos at the airport restaurant. The plane finally left Miami for Quito around 8 PM. They served chicken, potatoes, rolls and chocolate mint cookies on the plane. I had an elderly couple from Sheffield sitting next to me on the plane (the only time I had people sitting next to me). We watched some Disney animated movie on the plane as well as a 15-minute clip from Letterman. The rest of the time I spent listening to some radio show about Miles Davis. We circled around the mountains on the descent into Quito and landed around 11 PM CST. My luggage was already there waiting for me when I arrived. I found the person from the shuttle service to Best Western, checked in, went up to my room and fell asleep.

Friday September 8th
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Woke up around 8:30 AM, went upstairs for breakfast (Choco Krispies/Yogurt/Croissants/Coffee). Here are some views of the city outside my hotel window:

They gave me $10 in gift certificates for the casino attached to the hotel so I went down to check it out. The girl working behind the counter didn't speak any English and I only know some very basic Spanish but somehow we had a conversation for at least ten minutes... I think I may have inadvertently signed up for something, actually. I played video poker for a while and then took a walk around town for a couple hours. There's a large store next to the hotel called "American Store" and a mall across the street with a Tower Records. There's a $10 Pulp DVD there that I might buy before I go home. Had lunch at KFC, $1.50 bought me a piece of chicken, fries, a large drink and cookies (I should mention now that they use US currency in Ecuador). This city reminds me a lot of Toronto except everyone speaks Spanish and they have juggling kids instead of squeegee kids. I felt really safe walking around this part of town near my hotel. I went to the grocery store and bought a couple things. You could get a 26er of any kind of hard liquor there for under $3. Came back to my room, watched TV for a couple hours, found the Internet café in the hotel and then got a call from one of the guys (Sam) that's going to the Galapagos under the same program as me. I took a cab to the intersection he gave me near his hostel. It was 6:30 PM, which is approximately the time the sun sets in Quito. I couldn't find the hostel so I asked a cop, who sent me off in the complete opposite direction. I finally found an Internet café and looked up the name of the hostel, and after about 20 more minutes of walking around in the dark I found it. We went to a restaurant next to his hostel where I had a 600 mL (actually they measure bottle volume in cm3 here) beer for $1.50 and spaghetti alfredo with large chunks of ham for $4.00. Then Sam showed me a place that I could call home for about 12 cents a minute, then I took a taxi home, watched Letterman and slept. Oh, I should talk about popular music here in Quito. I switched through all the radio stations in the area and at least 3 or 4 of them were playing North American music. The rest is all the typical Latin music you'd expect. When I was in the Tower Records earlier, they had a display with the top 25 selling CDs for the week, and 3 were by North American/British artists: Nelly Furtado, BEP, & Keane. Keane seem to be especially popular here.

Saturday September 9th
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Woke up around 8:30 AM again this morning, made some coffee and just hung out in my room watching TV until 10:30 when Sam called and I went down there. His hostel manager called up a taxi driver to take us to a famous market called the Otavalo Indigenous Market in the Northern Andes which is apparently the largest outdoor market in Ecuador and is especially large on Saturdays. The entire 2-hour trip to the market was through the mountains and we took plenty of pictures.

I saw some llamas grazing - I couldn't tell if they were wild or not since they were near a restaurant but didn't appear to be caged in.

The market was huge, if you even glanced at something the seller would be all over you trying to make a deal. I bought a hand-carved chess set for $8 among other things.

Had some pizza and lime juice for lunch then came back to Quito. Was back at my hotel for 5 PM, where I relaxed until 9 PM. It seems that every night around 6 PM a maid is going to be coming to my room to give me free chocolate. Around 9 I took a cab back to the hostel district to meet up with Sam. We went to a Mexican restaurant, I had an enchilada, then walked around a bit and checked out the surprisingly vibrant nightlife, then went home and passed out. I found this picture strange... it's the price list in the hotel for international calls... see how well you know Spanish and try and figure out what is wrong with it:

Sunday September 10th
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Woke up around 7 AM to get down to Sam's hostel before 8. Had some juice there that was some weird amalgam of oranges, papayas and something that tasted like carrots. Sam & I and four of Sam's hostelmates from Oregon left in a tour van for the Cotopaxi volcano, one of the largest active volcanoes in the world. Our tour guide told us on the drive about the upcoming elections and how everyone in Ecuadorian congress is corrupt and how Ecuador is holding back from entering a free trade agreement with the U.S. even though other countries in South America have entered one. Here's a picture of some campaigners for one of the candidates:

We drove a ways up the volcano, stopped at a visitor's centre to learn more about the volcano, and I bought some gloves. This is a picture of a tunnel carved out in the side of the volcano by lava over the years:

Then we drove further up the volcano and stopped at a lake that formed on the side of it. There were some birds there eating algae but no condors.

We also saw a lot of wild horses and a couple wild cows on the drive up the volcano.

We drove up to the 4500 m point, then got out to walk the rest of the way to the refuge on foot.
It was snowing at this point.

I definitely felt some altitude sickness, like I wanted to faint or throw up for most of the walk, although every time we stopped walking for a minute I felt fine almost immediately. We hiked up about 300 m and had some hot chocolate at the refuge. To climb from the 4800 m point to the peak at
5800 m would require mountain climbing gear. We then descended the 300 m much more quickly than we came up and drove back down the volcano. We took a different route home through some of the poorer farming areas where the roads were practically non-existant at places. We were pretty tired getting back into town. We met up for dinner with another volunteer, Chris, who is a 32-year-old high school geography/history teacher from California. We went to an Internet café for a bit afterwards,
then I went home and watched The Godfather and fell asleep.

Monday September 11th
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Slept 10 hours last night. Woke up around 9:30, watched Anchorman and had coffee and sour worms for breakfast. Sam took a cab down here and we walked around a bit, I had a sandwich at a deli then we went to our meeting with the volunteer network through which we're going to the Galapagos. I met the woman from Ontario (near Owen Sound, kinda) who's coming to the Galapagos and got my plane ticket. Spent the next few hours watching movies, had some chicken for dinner then went home and
watched Godfather II and fell asleep.

Tuesday September 12th
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Woke up around 8:30 AM, went over to Grayline Tours with Sam with an expected tour around 10 AM, they turned out to have given us erroneous information over the phone so we missed our tour. We ended up just taking the trolley down to the old part of Quito. First we went to La Compania de Jesus Church, built in the 1600s and apparently has a lot of similarities to the Vatican.

Had a burger and Sprite for lunch, checked out the Museo de la Ciudad (The City Museum):

then took an hour taxi ride to the Mitad del Mundo City, which is a monument on the equator (north of Quito). Here's me being a tourist with one foot in each hemisphere (not sure what's wrong with my face):

We took a bus back to Quito, I had shrimp/seafood pasta for dinner, watched Casino and went to bed.

Wednesday September 13th
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Woke up around 7 and took a taxi down to the airport. Met up with another volunteer there, Felix, from the Black Forest in Germany. The plane flew from Quito to Guayaquil, we waited on the plane for 30 minutes then it flew to San Cristobal airport. The terrain around the airport was very desert-like. They checked our baggage for seeds and then the volunteer co-ordinator met us in a truck at the airport. It was about a 45-minute drive to the place we were stationed through some dirt roads and mostly forest. We didn't see any interesting animals on the drive but four dogs chased after our truck for a while. We unpacked our things then took a tour of the area and had some chicken for lunch. We did about an hour of work doing gardening then had some soup, cake, plantains and other things for dinner. We walked about 20 minutes to a bar afterwards where I had a
few beers and shots of rum. I ended up falling asleep around 1 AM.

Thursday September 14th
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Woke up around 6 AM, heard roosters crowing, got out of bed a little before 7. Had pancakes and eggs for breakfast then went to work cleaning the weeds out of some farmland near the cabin and extending the garden making it twice the size it was. Felix accidentally brought his shovel down on one of Darwin's finches at one point but it seemed to be okay. After lunch we went bird watching/hiking, saw birds like mockingbirds and yellow warblers and I got pictures of a medium ground finch and a Galapagos flycatcher:

We came back and had spaghetti/rice for dinner then went to bed around 10.

Friday September 15th
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Today we went on a 4-hour hike to one of the beaches. Along the way I noticed I was breaking out with some kind of allergic reaction involving red dots on my arms and legs. We crossed some rivers and saw what we think were horse or donkey bones/skulls on the side of the road. Then we stopped at one point where our guide stopped and picked a bunch of fresh oranges from the tree. I usually don't eat oranges but they were so good I had five and could feel the enamel coming off my
teeth. Eventually we got to a national park-type area where we saw a bunch of tortoises in their natural habitat:

This was a turtle I walked right up to, and it tucked its head into its shell:

Finally we walked down to a sandy beach with huge waves and no animals except some big crabs and red-footed boobies on the rocks:

Finally, we took a truck ride back to the town and then back to our cabins.

Saturday September 16th
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Today we went into the main town on San Cristobal island for a snorkeling trip. We went to the tour company, tried on flippers/wet suits/snorkels, then went down to the ocean, got in the boat and headed off for a 20 minute boat ride to Kicker Rock, a large volcanic outcropping off the shore of San Cristobal where there are known to be a lot of medium-sized sharks:

There was a channel in the middle of the rock formation which was the first place we went in the water. Looking down in the water you could first see fish, then a minute later I could see Galapagos sharks and manta rays as well. At first I didn't look under the water much since I was trying to get used to my mask and flippers but after 5 minutes I pretty much kept my goggles under the water permanently. After 20 minutes we got back in the boat, had some tuna sandwiches and Nestle Tango cookies and then went to a different part of the rock on the outside and swam for about 30 minutes seeing many multi-coloured fish, starfish and one of the girls with us said she saw a hammerhead shark but nobody else saw it so I'm not sure if she's telling the truth or not. Finally we went to a beach crawling with sea lions that we swam with. Then we went back to the city, found a hostel, took a hot shower and went to the Internet café for a bit then to dinner and finally to a bar called Polo's. Then we bought a couple bottles of rum and coke at the corner store and went down to the beach to drink next to all the sea lions. Finally we went to some discotheque for a bit, then came home around 2 AM and passed out.

Sunday September 17th
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Woke up hungover around 9 AM, read a book on the hostel hammock for a couple hours, then walked into town to the Internet café to eat lunch and use the computers until 1:30 or so. Then I wanted to do laundry but the place was closed for lunch so I went for a walk around exploring the town and taking pictures, first to Playa Man beach with a lot of sea lions and then to the Frigate Bird Trail which normally has frigate birds but I didn't see any and also had the point where Darwin first landed on the islands:

The statue marks the point Darwin first landed on any of the islands:

There were also good viewpoints of various other points on the island. Went back to the reserve around 5 PM and went to bed early. This seems like as good a time as any to show you pictures of the reserve itself. First, here's the room I was staying in with Ayala from San Francisco and Pippa from Essex, England:

Here are the hammocks outside of my room:

Here are the bathroom/shower facilities:

Here are some of the fruits we had on trees near the reserve:

A couple pictures of the farmland we worked on:

Another view of the cabin I stayed in:

And the place we ate inside:

A view of the ocean from my cabin:

A really nice place we swam in about 5 minutes from the reserve:

The dog who lived on the reserve, named, no joke, "Negro":

Monday September 18th
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This morning I worked in another of the gardens near the reserve clearing away brush and working with a machete. After the 10:30 break I was clearing away some brush with very large thorns and I stepped on one that went through my boot and into my foot. One of the local Ecuadorian staff boiled some very hot water and put some salt and spinach in it and told me to balance my foot over top of it, and then put a piece of tinfoil over top. I did this for ten minutes and when the water cooled down I dipped the wound in and out of it and the lady put the spinach over top of it. It didn't take long to be totally cured, and also around this point my allergic reaction seemed to be clearing up. I spent the afternoon hiking around eating fruit and chopping a few things with the machete. At night we went back to the bar (the "Nackte Bar" as the German volunteers called it) and had some strong Ecuadorian alcohol made with sugar cane because 2 of the German guys were leaving the islands. Another word the German guys taught us is "Morgenlatte" which apparently means morning wood, or as they describe it, "when you wake up and your best friend is watching you". I also learned how to dance to Latin music from the girl volunteering from mainland Ecuador. We went home around 1 AM and fell quickly asleep. Here's a picture of how the bar looks during the day:

Tuesday September 19th
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Woke up very tired and hungover today. In the morning we worked digging holes for various endemic plants to be inserted in. We spent the afternoon having a meeting discussing what we liked and disliked about the reserve. I had dinner duty today which just involved helping with the dessert pastries and doing dishes afterwards. I went to bed early tonight.

Wednesday September 20th
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Had a good night's sleep. This morning we worked in an area about 10 minutes from the reserve, getting rid of invasive species of plants with the machete. The afternoon was spent cracking open poison apple nuts to collect the seeds for planting since they are an endemic species that the giant tortoises love to eat and the people at the reserve are trying to bring the poison apple trees back. We had 4 new volunteers come today, 3 from Germany and 1 from Ireland. We went to the bar at night again. The old Ecuadorian man who owned it had purchased in town for us Bob Marley's greatest hits and Radiohead - The Bends.

Thursday September 21st
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Woke up after only a few hours sleep, and spent the first part of the morning digging out tree trunks for a future pepper/tomato garden and the second half of the morning shoveling compost. After lunch we were supposed to work on personal projects but we ended up playing soccer at a field they had built near the reserve, which was a lot of fun. An example of a typical dinner was tonight's: potatoes, lentils, salad, steak, rice, and chocolate cake for dessert. After dinner I packed my stuff for the weekend and went to bed around 9 PM.

Friday September 22nd
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This morning it was raining really hard so it looked like we wouldn't be going on our Friday hike but then it quieted down and we went out. We got to the border of the reserve and the Galapagos national park, and we were told about all the things the national park are not doing that they should be doing to help control invasive plant species. We walked to the cliff face at the ocean and we could see Santa Fe island off in the distance. We then swam in a freshwater pond filled with water that came down in a river from the mountains:

And a picture of a male frigate bird (the red means he's male) that kept swooping down into the pond while we swam in it:

There was also a sea lion and plenty of crabs around:

Then, some of the people went back to the reserve and the rest of us hiked along the edge of the cliff/ocean for a few more hours, with most of the environment being very barren and cactus-ridden:

Here's one of the German guys, Felix, showing how big this cactus is:

Here are some pictures of red-footed boobies:

We eventually made our way back to the bar, had a beer, ate dinner at the reserve, packed and took a cab into town. I went to the bank and to use the Internet for a bit and then went to bed.

Saturday September 23rd
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Woke up early today around 6 AM and caught a boat to Santa Cruz island with Lori and Felix. I had some seeds still stuck to my pants from the hike the day before so I had to spend 15 minutes pulling them all off before they would let me on the boat. After being on the boat for 20 minutes one of the motors stopped working so we had to turn back to San Cristobal island and try again with a new boat. When we got to Santa Cruz we had a few hours to kill before we left on the boat to Isla Isabela so we went for a walk down to the Charles Darwin Research Station:

We saw a bunch of baby tortoises being bred to eventually be re-introduced to the wild to help rejuvenate the tortoise populations:

We also saw some land iguanas:

We ran into Ayala and Pippa who had left San Cristobal a day earlier and they said they were about to leave on a cruise of some of the various islands until Tuesday. We took the boat to Isabela at 2 PM, stopping along the way to take pictures of the random rock formations jutting out of the water:

We arrived in Isabela around 4:30, found a good hostel right next to the beach:

...and went into town for dinner and groceries. I had octopus and french fries for dinner. We then walked back, and I went to the beach to write this entry and now I'm going to bed.

Sunday September 24th
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Woke up, had a donut and some kind of apple pastry for breakfast, and at 8 AM the guy who piloted our boat the day before picked us and some others up in his truck and we drove about 45 minutes to a point about 500 m up the Sierra Negra volcano. We got out of the truck and got on horseback to go up to the volcano's crater:

It was raining at first and the horses were having a hard time; the horse being ridden directly in front of me slipped and did the splits at one point but it got itself back up. Eventually it stopped raining and the ground was dry and stable the rest of the way up. The view into the crater, which is the second largest crater of an active volcano in the world, was full of black rock that looked really cool:

This volcano actually erupted less than a year ago (October 23rd, 2005). We walked along the other side of the volcano and saw some of the paths the lava took as it came down the side of the volcano:

We got to a point where we could see a lot more of Isabela to the north, as well as the Pacific Ocean and Fernandina Island not too far off to the west. We then went back to the horses and hiked back down. My horse started to have a pretty difficult time maintaining balance so I got off and walked it the rest of the way. We got back to the hostel around 3 and took a short walk over to the giant tortoise breeding centre which is right in front of our hostel and saw a flamingo and a bunch of lizards on the way there:

There were hundreds of tortoises at the breeding centre, some of each individual species from the different islands that will get introduced back into the wild when they are old enough. Then Felix, Lori & I went into town to buy pasta/onions/garlic/tomatoes/tuna/plantains to make pasta and sauce for dinner and fried plantains for dessert. After dinner we all pretty much went to bed after doing laundry.

Monday September 25th
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Woke up today with no commitments so Felix and I took a walk into town, looked around at all the construction going on, remembering that Isabela is supposed to be the next big tourist spot in the Galapagos in the next 5-10 years or so, then walked back down the beach, stopping to finally see some iguanas in the wild. There were hundreds of them all along the beach, some of them really large. The larger ones let us get really close to them. They were all marine/sea iguanas which live 30 years, compared to land iguanas which live 60:

We met up with Lori at the hostel and walked the other direction down the beach, stopping to look at various landmarks:

On the walk along the beach, there were another kind of crab that would run into its hole if you came within 50 feet of it. However, we managed to corner one of them to take a picture of it:

If we had continued on the trail for another few kilometres, we would have gotten to the Wall of Tears which marks where prisoners had to build their own prison 50-60 years ago when there was a penal colony on Isabela, but we wanted to leave a lot of time to get back since we had snorkeling at 3 PM. We got back around 1:30, and I had time to eat lunch and finally write some postcards. Then we were picked up and taken to the dock where we took a boat to one of the small volcanic islands near the coast of Isabela. There were plenty of sea lions and iguanas on the land and there was a narrow channel that had dozens of reef sharks swimming through it. There were also plenty of penguins at certain places along with blue-footed boobies:

We found a spot to go snorkeling, but the weather was bad and the water was dirty with a strong undertow and there wasn't really much to see compared to the first snorkeling trip. We then came back to town, showered, ate dinner, then we came back and I wrote the rest of my postcards and went to bed.

Tuesday September 26th
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Woke up at 5:30 this morning in order to make the 6 AM boat ride off the island. We got to Santa Cruz island around 9 AM and had to kill time until the boat to San Cristobal left at 2:30 PM:

We met a girl on the boat who was originally from Calgary but was now living permanently on Santa Cruz who we went for breakfast with. Then we went to the Internet café for a bit, and Lori stayed there while Felix and I went off to the bank then on the cobblestone trail to Tortuga Bay. Felix stopped halfway to have a nap on one of the benches but I continued down to the beach:

We weren't supposed to swim due to the strong undertow, although there were plenty of surfers here. The beach wasn't anything too special so I went back to where Felix was sleeping and had a nap as well. The boat ride back to San Cristobal was really choppy and they made us wear lifejackets the whole time. We got back to San Cristobal around 5:15 PM, looked around for Ayala and Pippa since we were supposed to meet them at 5 PM to take a taxi ride back to the reserve but couldn't find them, then we left Lori at her hostel and went back to the reserve. We had a late dinner, talked to everyone else about the trips they took on the weekend, went to the bar for one last beer and then went to bed around 11 PM.

Wednesday September 27th
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Woke up around 6:30 AM to find a cockroach sleeping right next to my head. Had french toast and regular toast for breakfast then went into town with Sam, Kate, Amanda, Monica and a few others after saying goodbye to everyone and playing with Negro a bit. Kate and I got dropped off at the airport because she wanted to change her flight, and she helped me get checked in and boarded as she speaks Spanish much better than I do. On the plane, the girl sitting in front of me happened to be a girl that I had run into a couple times already, first when she took a snorkeling tour with us and second when I hiked with her a bit on the Frigate Bird Trail. She was going home to Switzerland after spending three months on the islands and it was just a coincidence that we were on the same flight sitting so close to each other. She took a taxi with me back to my hotel and then we went to Sam's hostel where she would stay for the night. I went to use the 12 cents a minute phone place, then her and I had some dinner at the place Sam and I ate my first day in Quito. Apparently the owner of the restaurant lived in Switzerland for 5 years and because of this he gave us each a free shot of Amaretto and only charged me $1.00 for my beer instead of $1.50. I never actually found out what the girl's name was. Afterwards, I went home, tried to go to the casino since I had another $10 gift certificate, but I was told I couldn't go in wearing shorts, so I just went back upstairs to bed instead.

Thursday September 28th
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Took a shuttle to the airport around 7 AM, took the flight to Miami without event. When I was going through customs at the Miami airport, they asked me to wait in a room by myself with my bags left outside the room. After about five minutes, a customs officer came in and asked me for my social security number, I said I didn't know it, and he left again. Five minutes later he came back and said I could go. I have no idea what all that was about. The rest of the day was boring plane rides to Atlanta and to Buffalo, where my mom picked me up. We stopped at the duty free shop for coconut rum and arrived home around 11 PM. Here's a picture of the Galapagos airport to end with:

Here are some videos I took that I uploaded to Youtube:
Iguana Video 1
Iguana Video 2
Iguana Video 3
Tortoise Video 1
Tortoise Video 2
Flamingo Video

Here's a list of countries that all the people at the reserve came from:

Germany: 9
United States: 4 (2 rural Georgia, 1 Chicago, 1 San Francisco)
Canada: 3 (2 Ontario, 1 Quebec)
England: 3 (1 London, 1 Essex, 1 Bristol)
Ireland: 1
Spain: 1
Ecuador (mainland): 1
Russia: 1

A list of some of the fruits we could pick off the trees and eat at our leisure:

Lemons
Limes
Oranges
Quinces (kind of like an apple/pear hybrid)
Passionfruits
Blackberries
Plantains
Other stuff I can't remember or don't know the name of

Finally, a list of the animals I saw:

Sea lions
Giant tortoises
Marine turtles
Land iguanas
Marine iguanas
White-tipped reef sharks, and another variety of Galapagos shark I don't know the name of
Manta rays
Dozens of species of multi-coloured fish including starfish
Penguins
Frigate birds
Red- and Blue-footed boobies
Darwin's finches, a few different varieties
Other birds, including mockingbirds, yellow warblers, herons etc.
Lava lizards and other lizards
Flamingoes
Wild horses and cows and other common North American animals

All in all, it was an excellent trip and something I really needed at this point in my life, and I wish I could have stayed a lot longer. It was great to meet a large group of unpretentious biology and environmental science-minded people from all over the world, and was a nice surprise to find out that some German girls are actually really good looking. I might update this post in the future, as I'm waiting for e-mails from some people with more pictures, including underwater pictures of sharks, etc., from the first snorkeling trip. If you have any suggestions for my next trip, let me know. I think my ultimate goal will be to get to Antarctica, and, to actually have a good reason to be there. Not all of the pictures I took are shown here; the rest are on my photobucket if you want to look through them.

chris

The Voyage of the HMS Moogle