This week, most of my days consisted of class and then lunch and then class again. The morning class consisted of fieldwork which ended up being very exhausting. I fell asleep as soon as I got back home one day because I was so exhausted after trekking through the trees and over lava rocks.
Monday was my host sisters’ birthday! I came home as soon as I was done with class to help my host mom with making dinner for the 20 people coming over that night. She had already made a pot of rice that was so so huge, I don’t know how we ended up eating all the rice that we did. She also made a salad and chicken for dinner. I helped making a sort of fruit salad that was made up of fruit cocktail, cream cheese, yogurt, and potatoes. It was an interesting mixture but actually didn’t taste too bad. We celebrated their birthday and sang happy birthday! It was a much bigger group than I’m used to for birthday dinners so I did my usual introvert thing and tried to stay out of the way and find one person to talk with. I ended up sitting with two of the nuns and talking with them for a bit while we all ate dinner. They were super sweet! After everyone was done eating, everyone slowly went back home and we all helped finish cleaning up before watching TV before bed.
We did have a change in the usual schedule on Wednesday. Our class took a field trip to the beach! We started out with class an hour earlier in the morning but then went to visit the Galapaguera (a second visit for me!) and the freshwater crater lake, which is the only natural freshwater source on all the islands.
Our first stop was the lake called Junco Lagoon. Our professor, along with a naturalist guide who also used to be his student, gave us information about the lagoon. While we were listening up on the hill that overlooks the lake, the wind was very strong – my rain jacket and hair kept getting whipped around and I mistakenly wore shorts so my legs had permanent goose bumps. One of the cool facts we learned as we watched some of the frigate birds were almost diving into the water was that they were actually taking little baths. Since the lagoon is freshwater, the birds were using it to wash some of the salt off that they build up being by the ocean. (Frigates don’t actually fish for their own food, most of the time it comes from them harassing other birds, such as the blue footed boobies, until they can steal the fish that the other one just caught.) We also used binoculars to identify which birds were males, females, or juveniles. We walked back down to the bus and on the way, some of the clouds at the top of another hill moved to reveal three wind turbines! My friend Diego asked the guide about how much energy those produce and it’s just enough to supply the islands average energy use. However, there are still some days that go over that usage so the fossil fuel powered electricity is still used but greatly complimented by the wind turbines.
Our next stop was the Galapaguera. Since I had just been here a few days before, the only difference really was that now the tour was in English instead of Spanish and we had Carlos (our professor) who gave us lots of added facts along the way. As we were walking, we saw a few endemic plants and insects. One of which was the carpenter bee, which looks very similar to the carpenter bees we have at home except the females are entirely black. The other interesting thing I saw was lantana that had been introduced on the island. A few days before I thought I had seen a familiar flower but just assumed it was similar. Turns out it was the wildflower that we have growing in our backyard that had been introduced.
By the time we looped back around by the nursery and to the entrance we were all starving.
The university had provided us each with a tupperware of chicken, rice, and vegetables with some watermelon for desert. I really love the use of reusable stuff here, even for trips we don’t pack everything in single use plastic bags or use plastic silverware, it’s so nice to see how easy it is to cut down on plastic use.
Once we were all full, we headed back to the bus to spend the rest of the day at the beach. I feel so lucky to be in a place where class actually consists of just going and hanging out on the beach together! We got out onto the beach and it was much colder than when I went with my host family. I think we only stayed in the water for maybe 15 minutes before we were all too cold and decided to chill on the beach. Some people in our class were from the west coast and some of us were from the east coast so we were talking about all the differences in our beaches to the one in Puerto Chino. We also saw some people surfing which was pretty crazy since there were so many rocks right along the shore. We headed back to school after our little beach day to get home in time to have dinner.
Friday was our last day of class! We just had our usual afternoon class in the morning, which was supposed to be 3 hours but ended up being 4 really long hours of learning how to program a statistical analysis software called R. By the end of class, we were all exhausted and I had a headache from trying to follow what was going on. I headed to lunch and then back home to meet up with my host mom. We got a taxi and headed to one of the other beaches to go walk. The beach is called La Lobería and it has a little half hour walking “trail” through the coast line. We started out on the trail to the part of the beach where people spend time on the beach and ran into some of my USFQ friends. After saying hi, we kept going onto part of the trail that didn’t even seem to be a trail anymore. We were walking over hills of lava rocks and just watching for the little white markers to ensure we were on the trail. There were a few times I almost stepped on a marine iguana because they blend in so well to the rock! Once we got to the end, there were a bunch of sea birds. There was one species that I can never remember the name of that was sleeping right along the cliffs edge. It reminded me a bit of the part of Española that we visited.
We walked back down the path and I was in the lead and could not find my way, I kept about going off the path because I couldn’t tell where the path was so I let my host mom lead the rest of the way. She told me that a year or so ago there was a tourist who actually got lost and died because he went past the end of the trail and couldn’t find his way back. I can totally see how that could happen. When we got back to the touristy trail the sun was starting to go down and the tide was coming in. We passed sea lions that were still in the same spot from half an hour before and looked like that hadn’t even shifted position. There was also a pair of baby sea lions! They were adorable, I am so glad I chose this time of year to come because almost every day at the beach I have seen at least one baby. We walked back along the main road and then caught a taxi to the university (so that my host mom could pay for a vegetarian cooking class) and then walked back home.
After an hour home, I headed back out to meet my class for dinner with our professor. He took us to a restaurant that had really good fish and an overall huge portion of food. We also all got to try the beer that is made on the island called the Endemica. (I thought it was pretty good but I really haven’t liked the taste of any beer here) We talked through dinner about Carlos’ different studies and about Australian football and all sorts of things. Carlos left the rest of us after paying for our dinner (so nice!) and thanked us for the research we had done for field work because he may be able to use it in his own project. The nine of us hung out for a bit afterwards until everyone finished their beer and decided to either head home or go out dancing. I went home because I was exhausted and didn’t have my passport to be able to get in to any of the discotheques.
Saturday was a pretty chill day. I started working slightly (not really at all) on studying for our final on Tuesday and then also painting for a little bit. I went to help Carolina who is painting a mural at their high school. I didn’t help too much because she had done so much great painting already and had gotten to the more intricate stuff, that I didn’t want to accidently mess up her hard work. I painted part of a log and then headed back inside because I was in shorts and a t-shirt and suddenly the wind picked up so it was too cold. Carolina is painting a mural of San Francisco de Assis and it looks amazing. I got back inside and then wrote some of my other blog before getting ready to go to dinner with some friends before we went out for the night to go dancing! We went to a tourist place (you always know because the menus are in English and Spanish) that had really good pizzas and burgers (also a sign that it’s probably a touristy place) and then headed to one of the piers and another bar to kill time before going to the discotheques that don’t really have anyone there until 12pm. The bar we went to was called Iguana Rock and one my friends host parents work there. They were super sweet and kept offering her drinks even though she really doesn’t drink that much alcohol. I tried a mojito with one of my friends and really didn’t like it (right now I am convinced that I really just don’t like any alcohol). The leaves from the mint kept getting up the straw too so that wasn’t super fun.
Once it was close to 12, we migrated to one of the two discotheques on the island. This one is actually called The Island and I didn’t enjoy being there too much. I was looking forward to real dancing, not trying to dance to electronic EDM type music. Julianne, Phoebe and I stood towards the outside of the dance floor trying to figure out how to even dance to the music. They DJ also kept releasing this weird strawberry smelling smoke that made my hair smell like that until I showered the next day. We weren’t there very long and headed to Neptune (the other discotheque – how many times can I saw discotheque in one post!) which was much more crowded and had much better music. I ended up dancing with Mariah’s host brother for the whole 2 hours we were there. The music was so much better here, they even played some Bob Marley at one point! I didn’t even notice it had been two hours until I started looking around and couldn’t see any of my friends so I decided to check my phone to make sure I hadn’t been completely left behind, and then saw it was 2:30 already! Thankfully, our awesome friend Diego had been the dad of the group all night and was making sure everyone got home safe and he found me looking for everyone. I got outside and realized I had a sweat line down my shirt from my purse hanging in the same spot all night! Diego and I waited outside for Mariah and her brother and then we all walked home together to make sure everyone got back safe. Once I got through the door, I quickly got ready for bed and was out within a few seconds. The next morning my host mom said all she heard was the door opening and locking and then nothing because I fell right asleep. The next day I was so tired that all I did really was work on a different blog post and get some ice cream from the great little restaurant near the university.
This next week I don’t have class since Carlos has to fly back to Quito to teach a new class. That means we just have the whole week to cram for an exam Tuesday and to write a very difficult report due Saturday, so fun!
Solaventuras 