Hi, so I hope everyone's doing well. A couple of weeks ago I took a trip (5 days) through the Galapagos Islands, on a 100 year old sail boat. Despite the size of the boat, I managed to only get a little sick, with my head over the railing, so to speak, just once. On the boat were 6 german-speaking people, 2 colombians, 1 english woman, and myself. It was a rather nice time, and I made friends with a couple of the german girls (doing research here in ecuador) and a colombian women with her mom (I talked with her a while, good practice with my spanish and interesting too, because she's one of the negotiators of the free trade treaty(tratado libre comercio, TLC) between the U.S. and the Andean nations. It's interesting, because the people here have a different attitude about free trade issues than many of the people I know in the United States (mostly liberal types.) Their concern (the people here, that is) is that small businesses will lose out, although most people think that the people of Ecuador would be better off overall, due to more foreign investment (which is lacking in Ecuador), more money, more jobs, etcetera. The poverty rate here is about 60 or 70 percent, pretty high. Anyway, I have some pictures to show all, not everything, but some interesting things.
First off, a view of the boat:
This was our one good day of sailing. I don't have any good profiles of the boat, but I have to tell you that it was way cooler than all the rest.
Next up, a little example of the landscape (though not typical, necessarily)
From around where I took this picture we saw a good deal of different kinds of birds:
Here's a masked booby
Next, a couple blue-footed boobies
Here's some cute little Galapagos mocking birds
I'm not exactly sure what they were doing, but they were taking turns at it, in a small group. Maybe mating rituals?
Anyway, we saw some albatrosses doing their mating dance. It's fairly odd, with them smacking their beaks repeatedly, bobbing their heads side to side, and other interesting things. I didn't get a great picture of that, but here's what the result would be
Very cute. The mothers only have one baby, and then after a while, the baby has to learn to fly. Fortunately, they´re located next to cliffs that make taking off easy. Unfortunately, it´s a long way down those cliffs, if they're not up to the task.
Here's some more birds typical of the Galapagos:
The pink flamingo, always attractive
The pelican, always hanging around, slurping fish down their gullet
And the Galapagos Hawk, always around to feast on the placentas of sea lions
Speaking of sea lions, they hang out in large colonies as well. Here's a typical scene in a colony, including the tourist feet:
And a cute little pup picture
However, I did hear of some folks on another boat getting bit by one of the papas, for being a little too intrusive on the fellow´s females.
Also in the Galapagos there are a few species of iguanas. One is the marine iguana, endemic to the Galapagos, and an odd sight to see when it is swimming, undulating it´s tail and body:
They have extra low metabolism for being reptiles, which lets them swim around, eating little sea plants.
The other type is the land iguana
Who eats the leaves of this strange cactus-tree (I forget the name)
No tortoise pictures yet, my Colombian friend was going to email me some good ones (the ones I have, they're just hiding their heads in their shell, being scared and all, not too impressive, kind of like big rocks)
However, I do have an obligatory closing picture, for any good ocean trip:
