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Galapagos!
Entry 18 of 35 | show all | print this entry |
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Wow! Finally here - after almost missing our flight! Doh!
We checked in and everything, the 4 of us new volunteers and then went through and waited for our flight to be called. We waited, and waited. Other flights were called and their details changed on the board. But not ours, so we waited. And waited. Suddenly over the speakers came a final call for us 4. How very, very odd. Still not really sure what happened there. The plane was full when we boarded, except for us of course. When we left the terminal, our flight was still listed as pre-boarding (exactly as it was when we checked in) and not Boarding, or Final Call or anything. Anyway, we're here now and what a place!
From the airport it's a short (free) bus ride down to the ferry, followed by 50 cents and 10 minutes over the strait between Isla Baltra and Santa Cruz. On the other side of the ferry we were met by Chris who is Ordex's man on the Galapagos. Ordex being the organisation in Ecuador that Real Gap work with, and Real Gap being the UK company that we booked the volunteer program with. Already on the ferry we'd seen frigate birds and pelicans. Cool. On the way to Puerto Ayora where we spent last night, we stopped off at a farm. Odd I know, we'd always thought that all of the Galapagos was national park, but it actually isn't. 97% of the land area is national park, but the other 3% is used for farming and urban areas. Anyway, this farm, being right on the edge of the national park has tortoises that wander in and out all the time, so the farmers make a bit of extra money by letting tourists wander around taking photos of them. So within a couple of hours of landing here we were wandering around and had seen our first 4 giant tortoises - in the wild. Well, almost at least - there aren't any fences that keep them in, so technically it's in the wild for them, even if it is a farm.
After that we took a short walk through a lava tube which was pretty cool and then rocked on down to Puerto Ayora to check in to our hotel and have some lunch. Not wanting to waste our first day, we got Chris to take us over to the Charles Darwin Research Station which is a breeding, research and information centre about the giant tortoises (and conservation on the islands). It's run by the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF), which was set up by UNESCO way back when to help with conservation on the islands. These days the Ecuadorian government do their bit as well, with the Galapagos National Park Service (GNPS) working together with the CDF on a whole bunch of different projects. Our breeding centre on Isbela is a joint project, with GNPS running it with support from the CDF - it all seems to work fairly well.
Anyway, at the CDRS there are loads of giant tortoises from all the different islands, including Lonesome George, who is the last of his kind. They're trying to get him to breed with a couple of females from the nearest race, but so far without success. On a happier note, another type of tortoise that had almost died out has been brought back. They could only find females here, but it turned out that San Diego zoo had a male of the same race - Diego - so he was brought back, and they've already successfully raised and released a bunch of their young. Marvellous. Having seen the BBC Galapagos programs, we were expecting it, but it was still very cool to see a whole bunch of pelicans hanging round the fishing dock in the middle of Puerto Ayora. Along the dockside there we even had our first encounter with marine iguanas and sea lions. Right in the middle of town. Very, very Galapagos.
This afternoon we're heading over to Isla Isabela where we'll be for almost 4 weeks, working at the tortoise breeding centre there. More thumbnails ...
Where I stayed:
Hotel Flamingo
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