Happy Thanksgiving from Galapagos

I´m not sure when I´ll be able to post again, so here is a whole heap of uploads from the past few days...

Everglades (11-23-08)
The Everglades, simply put, was awesome. Over a million acres of wetland. Technically, the Everglades is the largest river in the world. In the wet season, Lake Okechobe overflows and sends its extra water out as a slow flow south. This slow flow creates the swamps we think of when we think of the Everglades. We break the day up into four parts—classroom time, walking the Anhinga Trail, more classroom time, and finally the slough sloggin’ wet walk.

The Anhinga trail is named after the Anhinga bird, who occupies the area quite nicely. Unfortunately, it also serves as an example of how very specialized animals can’t keep up the rapid changes caused by people and the introduction of exotic and invasive species. The anhinga, for example, is built to spear fish, throw them into the air, and then swallow them. With native fish, this works fine. With invasive fish that have come in and crowd out the natives, this doesn’t really work so well, because they are bigger than the native fish and won’t fit down the anhingha’s throat. Anyway, a nice walk and we saw several alligators and birds.

Out of Miami (11-24-08)
Leaving Miami, we spent about an hour on the ground (thanks to a loose screw on our airplane… literally) and 4 hours in the air on the way to Quito. During the flight, of course, all I can think about are the reports of how Quito is known for its short runway in the mountains, and I believe I heard an article on NPR over the summer over how it had actually been closed due to the danger of the short runway. Add to this the comments of an Ecuadorean passenger on the plan who said that only the most experienced pilots are given the job of landing in Quito, as well as the fact that it was dark and raining, and you’ll understand why everyone broke out into applause upon our touchdown in Quito.

Bienvenidos a Quito (11-24-08)
Landing in Quito was muy exciting because it’s the first time I’ve left the country, much less the continent. Getting off the plane I expected to be suddenly inundated with and immersed in South American culture. It caught me off guard, then, when the first thing I saw when I came out of the gate was a huge poster for TGI Fridays… in English. It wasn’t even TGI Viernes. Continuing into the airport, there was a pretty sizable line for immigration (my first passport stamp) and then for the luggage. When we met our Ecuadorean tour guides, we were quickly handed bottles of water and told to drink to fend off altitude sickness. At (10,000 ish) feet, Quito is the second highest capital city in the world. After boarding a bus to the hotel, we took the short trip to the Sheraton in Quito. Once again, a very nice hotel. We had a late meal of chicken, seasonal veggies, blueberry mousse, and bread and butter. But wait, it wasn’t just any bread and butter, it was butter worthy of Sam… coffee flavored mantequilla. We then promptly went to bed.

Bleck (11-25-08)
The next morning I woke up hit by the altitude—slight nausea, headache, headache, and headache. I spent a few minutes to take care of email since it would be my last reliable email for a few days, and then we had a stunning breakfast. Any country that breads and fries bananas for breakfast is top notch in my book. Additionally, we had fresh squeezed fruit juices—sundia (watermelon), papaya, guava, naranja (orange). The thought of watermelon juice totally grossed me out, but it was actually really good.

Are we there yet? (11-25-08)
As soon as breakfast was over we headed for the airport, where we would sit for a longgg time after checking in. The check in process was fairly painless, especially since all of our bags had to be inspected for agricultural products, animals, etc. as part of the quarantine of the Galapagos. We flew on Aerogal (Air Galapagos) to Guayaquil, a port town that looked like a tangled knot of water from the sky—all kinds of water flowed through the area—streams, rivers, canals?, irrigation, etc. After refueling in Guayaquil, we were bound for San Cristobal.

Touching down on San Cristobal, it was a totally different airport from any I’ve experienced—it was an open-air airport. We passed through customes, got another passport stamp, and loaded up for the hotel. One of the most striking things is that the tension between conservation and use is immediately apparent. Many buildings are standing dormant, halted in various stages of construction. Garbage lies in nearly every ditch. Schools, houses, businesses look battered. At the same time, none of the areas look like the stereotypical high crime slum areas you would expect from the surroundings. This is one of the themes we’ll come back to again and again. This is also where we met our National Park tour leaders, Harry and __________. My half of the group was staying in the Miconia hotel. It is everything I would expect a hotel in the Galapagos to be. We can look out on the bay and see sea lions, crabs, frigate birds, blue footed boobies, and even a glimpse at a sea turtle.

GAIAS and the San Cristobal Tour Interpretation Center (11-25-08)
After settling in for just a few minutes, we departed for GAIAS, the Galapagos Institute of the Arts and Sciences. The goal of GAIAS is twofold—to educate outsiders and to educate islanders. The center runs exchange programs and offers a bachelors program and helps students get scholarships to mainland universities. There we listened to a presentation by Judith Denkinger, a marine biologist with the University of San Francisco, Quito. The focus of the presentation was on the unsustainability of overfishing and the interconnectedness of species in the ocean.

Leaving GAIAS, we walked up the hill to the San Cristobal Tour Interpretation Center. This is basically a visitor’s center that was built in 1998 with the help of the Spanish government. Inside is a great visual overview of the islands’ natural, social, cultural, and political history. The goal of the center is to give local students a way to connect with the national park. Since so much of the park is focused on the enjoyment of tourists, there are many children on the islands who have never experienced the park—have never seen a dolphin, have never seen a tortoise, iguana, etc. The center, therefore, coordinates opportunities for every school kid to tour the islands every year on one of the tourists boats. They basically coordinate for the large ships to take on students whenever they have extra room on board. The idea behind this is to give the kids a greater sense of connectedness to the islands and ownership of the islands. This is something that would be great for our area. I’m always talking about how shocked I am that so many students in Sevier County have never been in the National Park.

Behind the interpretation center is a marked trail that takes about 15 minutes to walk that I’m going to have to go back to.

A few interesting notes from inside the center… in discussion with our guide, someone asked about evolution and the response of the Catholic Church to evolution being taught in the schools it in the Galapagos. The response was “the father teaches about evolution in the church.” We were kind of surprised by the response, but the attitude was fairly summed up in a later exchange, when he pointed out a picture of Darwin and said “This is Darwin, some people think he is god, but he is not,” and one of the science teachers in the group said “Darwin isn’t a god, but he helped explain how God works.” It’s this kind of world view that I think is important to bridging the gap between science and religion. It doesn’t help students to not be exposed to evolution, and I think a carte blanche rejection of natural selection is an irresponsible position to take as an educator.

On the way back from the center, we stopped at a beach where some sea lions were playing an took pictures. I’d heard about the lack of fear animals have for man here, but it was amazing to see. If you sit down on the beach, they’ll eventually walk up right next to you, lay down, roll over, etc.

From the beach, Pren and I took an (inadvertent) detour through some of the non-waterfront house and businesses. I felt like I was in a photo editorial from National Geographic. Simply beautiful.

Dinner (11-25-08)
For dinner, we went to a place called (I think) Miramar. It was a good 20 minutes before they came to take our order, another 20 before drinks came, and another 30 before the food, but it was worth the wait. We sat at a table on the balcony overlooking the bay and the sea lions on the beach. Logistically, it is worthwhile to note that a 12 ounce Coke costs about $2-3, while a liter of beer was $2. I ordered encocantado de camaron (coconut shrimp) with rice and fried plantains (something I will order at every possible meal). My whole check including drink, tip, food, etc. was $12, and this was a more upscale restaurant.


An idea for a future project…
At the InterContinental in Miami, they were working aggressively on several water management programs. To reduce the amount of water used, they only washed sheets every three days. There was a note on the pillow explaining the program, and it said that if you wanted to clean you sheets everyday anyway, you could just put the note on your bed and they’d change your sheets (they also changed every time someone checked out). This was a very low impact way they could save lots of water (and money) without interfering with the conveniences of the guests. This appeals to me because we could so easily adapt this to Sevier County. There was also a request in the bathroom to reuse towels. Again, if you wanted to opt out, all you had to do was use a towel and put it in the floor and they’d replace it.