Island Exploration

El Junco, Fresh Water Crater Lake of San Cristobal

Class is going well, with a total of three weeks time for class the workload can be a bit overwhelming. But the worst part about taking classes on an island is that sometimes it is hard to find the desire to do anything. This Thursday was the start of the Galapagos parties, which is a time where the community pulls together and has a great time together celebrating the birth of Charles Darwin with music and dancing. They start the week of festivities with an island clean up project where everyone goes out to the beaches and streets and cleans up all the litter that has accumulated. As a class we participated in this process and cleaned the beaches all Thursday morning.

Later Thursday afternoon our native and introduced plants class departed on an overnight trip to the island highlands and surrounding areas. One of our destinations on the first day was the only freshwater lake in the Galapagos island chain. This lake maintains its water level through the dry season by collecting condensation and mist water from the passing clouds. The views from the top of the island were amazing. Here we were able to see how big the island actually was, it was pretty large.

We stayed the night near the coast at a small campground where they fed us dinner and gave us a campfire. At the campfire we shared ghost stories and island tales. A few of us have experienced the island pirate ghosts, I have yet to have any encounter with a ghost but I’m sure it will happen seeing as how there are so many here on the island. After the fire we decided to go into the field and soak up the stars where we were able to see a lot more than we regularly could back in town.

After an uncomfortable sleep in our tents we went for a walk down to the Galapaguera and then the beach for lunch and swimming. The Galapaguera is where they protect and breed tortoises, they were large and old. While we were at the refuge it was feeding time so all the tortoises were eating their lunch. After the refuge we hiked our way down to the beach Puerto Chino where the sun was shinning and the sand was powdery and white. The water was very refreshing and the waves were perfect for body surfing. We stayed at the beach for two hours and ate lunch.

After our island exploration we returned to town where the Galapagos parties were in full swing with a music festival on the pier. We danced around for the night and woke up the next day for the next concert on the beach just outside the university doors. The parties will be continuing until Wednesday I believe the Carnival starts on Monday. This is our last week for this session of classes and after carnival we star our next class, which I believe is evolution. Now I must try and reject the beach for a few hours and get some work done. Love

Puerto Chino Beach, San Cristobal