January 19th

Log Entry by Tamra Dickson

I´ve now been at the Galapagos a day and a half. Yesterday we saw sinkholes, lava tubes, and the animals at Darwin Research Station including land iguanas and Lonesome George, who is a tortoise famous for being the last of his subspecies. As a favor to the school, the scientists let us come inside the compound where the baby tortoises were being raised. They are so cute. After that I went and did a lot of shopping. This morning we went snorkeling in three places. I have pictures of lots of fish including a parrot fish, marine iguanas, boobies, pelicans, a manta ray, sea lions, urchins and other things. It was very fun, and it´s been a long time since I went snorkeling and that was when I was little in a pool. We were all breathing really fast at first because most of us were not used to the masks and were nervous. After a while we got used to it but swallowing seawater isn´t fun. After that, I showered and took a rented truck with three of my classmates and our guide from yesterday to see tortoises in the wild and walk through a lava cave. The tortoises were really big, and we actually saw two of them trying to mate, which is apparently rare to see. The lava tube was really cool. Most of the time it was many tens of feet tall but at one point it narrowed to where we had to crawl over rubber mats on our hands and knees. I had fun doing more shopping after that and found a great italian restaurant for dinner where I had a pasta with mussels, clams, octopus, squid and shrimp. I´ve had the native food of ceviches, which is marinated seafood, several times but I wanted to try out that restaurant before I left. Tomorrow we get on the R/V Thompson to start our work, and we will be on there until the 29th. I will have hi-speed interet that comes and goes so I can still post. After that we spend one night again at the Hostel Maiñao in Puerto Ayora (Galapagos) and one night at the Hotel Los Alpes in Quito be! fore coming home. The animals that I want to see that I haven´t yet are the Galapagos penguins and the flightless cormorants but I hear they live on the western islands so I may see them on the boat. I am currently on Santa Cruz which is roughly in the middle of the archipelago.