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I arrived on Santa Cruz, the main tourist Galapagos Island on Monday 26th August & caught a boat over to Isabela on the Tuesday. We're 960kms off the coast of Ecuador here. There are loads of islands stretching across 45,000sq kms of ocean, although only 4 have been colonized, and that wasn't until the 1940's & 50's so humans are quite new here. I'm on Isabela for almost 2 weeks which is the largest island in land mass & stradles the equator. It's made up of 6 volcanoes which have become fused together over time, 5 of which are still active (the last one blew in 2005, a park guard showed us the photos, rivers of lava & red hot rocks blown into the sky, etc). The landscape is very inhospitable as there is lava everywhere & the whole place looks very scarred and jagged. I can understand now why colonization failed so many times before the twentieth century. Just clearing the ground for one building looks like a nightmare, let alone a village.
Most tourists to the islands arrive on Santa Cruz & either stay there or stay on boats and tour round the islands. However, I'm on Isabela as that's where the Giant Tortoise Breeding Centre I'm working at is. Isabela is beautiful, it's like the island paradise you always dreamed of. The first day I got here I couldn't stop grinning. Mind you, that was also because I was glad to get off the boat that brought me here (2 hours of being smacked along the ocean holding onto my seat with people throwing up around you is not my idea of fun). The sky is bue, the sea is turquoise, the sand is pale gold and the sunsets are amazing. The only town on Isabela is Puerto Villamil which is where I am staying in a hostel with 5 other Tortoise volunteers. It's a very laid back town, I spent ages trying to find an internet cafe that was open yesterday (Saturday) but the whole town was shut because there was a fiesta on somewhere. The streets are just sand and there's very little traffic as there are hardly any cars. There's hardly anywhere to drive them though really. Most of the island is inaccessible due to the rocky lava.
It's slightly strange that there are really nice street lights and park benches and rubbish bins everywhere though. And also, lots of good walkways have been built over the lava or through the mangrove swamps to get to various viewpoints, however, I haven't seen an awful lot of tourists around to use them. I think most people come for a weekend or on a day trip with a tour guide but it feels like the town is expecting a huge influx of tourists who haven't arrived. The park benches are printed with 'Isabela crece por ti', which means 'Isabella grows for you'. I have heard that the rate of population growth on the Galapagos Islands is far exceeding that on the Ecuadorian mainland and that conservationists are worried abou this. Therefore the government is thinking about making it more expensive top come here in order to limit the growth of tourism (& therefore the population). I have slightly mixed feelings about this, obviously they need to protect the islands because the threat of introduced species is high but then that probably means I shouldn't be here doesn't it.
At every stage on my way here our bags were checked by officials to check we didn't have any citrus fruits or seeds or animals tucked away anywhere as there has been a huge problem with introduced species which then compete with the endemic species for food & resources, etc. On Isabela they are still working on eradicating the goats brought here by sailors in the 18th & 19th centuries. On other islands they are working on eradicating goats, fire ants and feral dogs & cats.
I've done 3 days at the Giant Tortoise Breeding Centre now. We have breakfast at the hostel at 7am & leave at 7:30 to walk the 30 mins to the Centre. The walk is lovely & we pass marine iguanas, flamingoes and loads of birds which I have no idea of the names for. There are about 800 tortoises there in total, babies, juveniles & adults. Some of the species are extremeley endangered and number less than 100 in population in the wild. The babies and juvenile get released into the wild when they are old enough. The adults are there because they couldn't cope in the wild or in order to continue the breeding programme.
They are fed with massive plants (elephant leaf or elephant root or something like that) on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays, so we take care of that & then rake the corrals and the babies pens to clear away leaves & tortoise poo. After this we're knackered, sweaty & disgustingly dirty as you can imagine. We generally finish around 12 so we have the whole afternoon free. On Friday, one of the volunteers had found a nest in the ground in one of the corrals so our boss, Fernando, dug it up & showed us how to mark the 9 eggs with a pencil to be put in the incubator. The eggs are like big ping pong balls. You can't turn the eggs over or it will damage the baby inside, I was convinced I was going to do something wrong but it all went well. I saw Fernando at the bar last night & he says all the eggs are normal so that's good news. It will be 4 months before they hatch. Like turtles, the baby tortoises gender is determined by the temperature of the eggs. So the Breeding Centre make sure that they get more females than males by adjusting the incubators in order to maximise breeding.
In the afternoon we have gone exploring or taken boat trips and snorkled. I've seen loads more Giant Tortoises in the wild which is nice, loads of frigate birds which are massive black birds & look like they're made of origami when they fold themselves up to dive into the water. I've seen blue footed boobies (birds whose feet really are bright blue and who are the subject of a great number of T-Shirts back on Santa Cruz), pelicans, massive marine iguanas swimming or basking in the sun, loads of weird crabs, sea lions who seem to just like hanging out around the harbour on boat decks sunning themselves but are really playful when in the water, penguins, we saw a couple of whales including one with it's calf the other day when we were on a boat trip as well as an enormous manta ray which is a huge flat diamond shaped fish about 2 metres wide & loads of eagle rays also. I have snorkled with white tipped reef sharks and yesterday with a couple of huge sea turtles in a lagoon as well as loads of other colourful reef fish. I was about a metre away from them and they are so graceful in the water. None of the wildlife seems very bothered by humans peering at them. I think perhaps they just don't have any innate fear of humans as we've only been on the islands for a few decades. The birds just sit in the trees and stare back at you or hop around your feet. Yesterday I almost stepped on a bunch of lazy iguanas who were exactly the same colour as the surrounding rocks so I didn't notice them until the last minute.
We're expecting some new volunteers later in the week. There's a nice mix of ages which is good. I'm expecting Monday (tomorrow) to be hard work at the Breeding Centre as the corrals won't have been cleaned all weekend and it's a feeding day as well.
The food here is similar to that in Costa Rica but I think I preferred the Costa Rican food. Again, they are carbohydrate mad & it's unusual if you don't get rice along with some form of potato on your dinner plate. But there's no beans and not as much plantain as there were there. I had 'chicken coca cola' the other day which was really nice & I would never have guessed it was made with coca cola, it tasted a bit like a chinese sauce. They are also mad for soups here. I have had some truly disgusting ones though - cow leg soup being the worst (milky looking vegetable soup with chick peas & pulses and unidentifiable & inedible bit of cow skin floating it it). I have had some nicer soups though, spinach with cheese and vegetable soup with cheese were both good. They seem to like putting cheese in a lot of soups which is a bit bit strange but actually quite nice. The cheese here, as in Costa Rica is a bit like a cross between mozarella & halloumi, quite salty.
I've taken a billion photos but the internet cafes round here are all really slow and it's like going back in time 10 years just trying to check your email so I can't upload any pictures yet. I'm not sure when I'll be able to either as I'm anticipating that I'll be in slow internet land for a few weeks yet. I'll upload pics as soon as I'm able to though.
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