Galapagos Trip, Days 1-3

This will be long, folks, so just grab a drink and get comfortable.



Our ten day trip to the Galapagos was beyond all expectations. I want to try and document as much as is possible for my own records, so...

We started the trip at 2AM in St. Louis driving to Washington University to park the truck, then riding the Metro into town. We had a long wait for the train, a long wait for the plane, a long flight to Miami, then a long wait in Miami. We walked the entire Miami airport, bought a few trinkets, had some dinner, a few beers, watched a game...really had a day at the Miami airport. The only things of interest in the Miami airport are pictured below...they had these brass inlays in their floors of various aquatic features. And they had these arrangements of fake fish on their walls. Ryan, these are for you, you would have loved them!

We arrived in Guayaquil, Equador at 10PM on the day that had started at 2AM! I was beyond tired. Lindblad Expeditions had someone at the airport who gathered our luggage, got us on the tour bus and got us to the hotel with fresh fruit drinks, cool minted towels and fresh beds. However, we were told that our wake up call came at 5:45 the next morning! Ugh. We crashed into bed, and awakened to a wonderful breakfast buffet. Our luggage was gathered again, we were gathered again and headed right back to the airport. One more plane ride to the islands, this ride was only about an hour and a half. Below is our view from our hotel window of the town of Guayaquil, which is the largest town in Equador.

Here's the Hilton Colon, where we spent the night both going to the islands, and coming back from the islands.

The airport in Galapagos is a very small, open air area, with a small marketplace on the other side of the landing strip. As we came through I spotted this bird, my first Darwin finch, hanging out in the support beams.

The area outside of the airport was open desert. Most of the islands are desert, and we saw many of these cactus trees while we were there. This one was our first though, so I made Mark pose.

We were loaded onto a bus and taken to the boat dock a few miles away. As we stepped out of the bus we were greeted by marine iguanas, sea lions lounging, a frigate bird flying by, a penguin playing in the water, and Sally Lightfoot crabs.

We loaded up on the boat, found our rooms, then went to the bar/lounge area to meet the crew, have a safety drill, and learn what the ship procedures would be for our trip. While we had a wonderful buffet lunch (which became the norm while on board), the captain set sail from the island of Baltra to the small island of North Seymour, which is north of Baltra.

We gathered for a late afternoon hike on the southern shore of the island. I figured out as the week went on that the ship's itinerary was created to make each day more spectacular than the last, so that each day we were newly amazed. However, for the first day, I hadn't figured out their plan. It was amazing how the animals were everywhere, and showed no fear of humans. We were told that on the Galapagos animals have few predators and have never learned to view humans as a predator so they show no fear of humans. This was true of all island systems which were not inhabited, but Galapagos is the only island system in the world where this is still in existence. We hiked a loop trail that had sea lions, blue footed boobies, frigate birds, marine iguanas, land iguanas, etc.

Don't these guys just need a couple of Coronas!

Here is a male frigate bird in flight. They have these crazy red throat "wattles", that are supposed to attract the femailes. Easy to spot!

Blue footed booby

A land iguana....all the white stuff on the rocks behind him is bird poop, which literally covers the surfaces in many areas. If you're gonna have big beautiful birds, you are going to have bird poop.

Here's a pair of blue footed boobies in a mating dance. I wish I had brought a video camera, the courting dances of the birds were amazing!

Here's a male frigate bird on his nest, advertising for a mate.

The Galapagos islands are thirteen major islands, with over 150 rocky formations that come out of the water. This is actually named as Daphne Minor, there was also a Daphne Major, which was a little larger.

Here's an immature frigate bird.

Momma and baby frigate bird on the nest.

I took many, many pictures of blue footed boobies, but this guy was the cutest. Straight on stare! I admit, I was the first one to blink!

Sunset of day one in Galapagos, day two of our trip. Daphne Minor in the background.

We went back to the boat for a sumptious dinner, time on the top deck after dark, then an early bedtime, because day three had a 6AM wake up call! I was beginning to realize this wasn't going to be a restful cruise!

DAY Three- October 26, 2009

Six AM wakeup call for a before breakfast hike on the island of Bartolome', described as a lovely volcanic islet off the east coat of Santiago Island. This area is nothing but rock, a few small plants trying to gain ground in the rock, and a Martian landscape. Our hike was a climb to the top of the island, 359 feet high. To control erosion, the National Park has created a wooden staircase of 372 steps. Mind you, this was before breakfast!

Here we are at the beginning of the hike. Note our cute little National Geographic name tags.
Here's a lava cactus, of course, in the lava.

The scenery was bizarre...I felt like we were hiking Mars!

Here is a pictures from the top of Bartolome'. The pointy rock is called Pinnacle Rock, and later on this afternoon we went snorkeling there. The green area is a mangrove forest. Mangroves can tolerate salty water.

A closer view of Pinnacle Rock. Here's a caldera that was visible from the summit. A caldera is an area where lava used to flow out, but it has now collapsed in. It was beautiful, but didn't really photograph as well.

A poor little plant showing a lot of tenacity!

I didn't do a good job of photographing our naturalist guides, either. This is a picture of Ximena. Our head naturalist, Lynn Fowler, was actually a niece of Jim Fowler, who was Marlin Perkins sidekick on the old show, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Our other naturalists were Ximena, Gilda, and Paul, who were all Equadorian. Paul was actually born on the islands, and returned there after earning his college degree. All the naturalists were trained by the Charles Darwin Research Station.

Back at the dock, there were lots of Sally Lightfoot crabs scurrying around.

A brown pelican.

A great blue heron

A galapagos penquin. A lot of the species on the islands were either "Galapagos" or "Lava"...it became a joke to decide which would be the species name!

Another frigate bird, this one was flying over the boat.

Puerto Egas, on the western edge of Santiago Island. we went snorkeling here, as well as a later walk.

The sea lions are nocturnal, so they put on their lazy act for us most of the time.

I love the shorelines! Look at the crazy rock formations caused by the lava.

A marine iguana. I think these were Mark's favorite animals of the week, but I found them less adorable. They were definitely EVERYWHERE though! This bird is called a Whimbrel.

This is a lava heron.

And this one is an oystercatcher. There were lots of funny looking birds on the islands!

More Sally Lightfoot crabs. Apparently Sally Lightfoot was the name of a dancer from Guayaquil who enchanted 19th century sailors.

Sunset, day three

Catch up....Austin's home!

It is time once again to try and play catch up. Since school started, things have been moving at a fast and furious pace, and I've not stopped to update this blog. Life is good....

School moves at a frantic rate, but one day, they tell me, I'll catch up. I still have a wonderful group of students, with the occasional crazy behavior to keep it interesting, and for the most part the year is going well. Our school didn't make AYP this past year, and are really paying attention to NCLB for the first time this year. Translate to mean endless meetings for staff, with little hope of making AYP this year as well, at least as far as I see it. After a year in the system, I can safely say that this "dual school system" doesn't work. I love the school and love the job, but I see trouble ahead!

Emery is growing up very quickly. I need another Emery fix again, but the airlines aren't seeing things my way. We will definitely be in SC in December, but I'm not sure if I'll make it before then.

Mark and I worked at a crazy pace in September and October to get his house ready to put on the market. His agent insisted that it needed to be listed before the tax credit ended in December. We exhausted ourselves painting, spackling, planting, decluttering, cleaning, washing, polishing, etc, and finally got it listed right before we left town. So far there have been a few showings, but nothing interesting, and they have now extended the tax credit till April. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is what it is. We've also paid the downpayment on the log home, downpayment with the builder, and started that process. We may end up with two homes, but hopefully not!

Most importantly, Austin is back on US soil! He arrived at Fort Bragg at 2AM on Sunday morning and soon after met his niece for the first time. He also celebrates his 21st birthday today, making me feel old!

And yes, we took a small vacation to a place called Galapagos. I'll post more about that later, along with pictures. I'm still weeding through them all!