La Costa y Los Galapagos

long time no talk.

soooooo March 6-March14? My familia was here and we all had a swell time in the galapagos and in banos. and My dad bought many many things in Otavalo (suprise suprise) sooo I'm going to fast forward a bit toooooooooo what happened next.

On the 18 of March we arrived at the coast. WE first stopped at a place called Piqueros Patas Azules ( blue footed booby ... well blue feet. and piquero is for the way they dive) and we checked out some of the intertidal life there like limpets and oliva, urchins, vacitas del mar ( super cute slugs, but means little cow of the sea), also saw lots of sea stars and sun stars etc. all that good stuff. All of it was also on very slippery rock. AHHHHHH. no worries. I didn't fall.

We did lots of intertidal jazzy stuff and look at cepholods, more slipper rock . got a little sun burtn and all and all had a good time.

AND THEN (oh man, you better be excitied for this....(my spelling is getting worse (and so is my punctuation use ))))))))))) we went to a FISH MARKET. It smelt bad. There were fish. ze end.
(i'm tired) No actually the fish markte was really cool and interesting because you get to see deep sea fish that you usually odn't get to see. Plus it was a small artesinal business so it is more or less done sustainably although some fish/sharks should not be fished. At the fish market we found some Dorado, all sorts of tuna, sea robin, hammer heads and other sharks. The current president unbanned shark finning (dumby). We also saw a flounder , calamari (at some of this too, but not at the market), swordfish, rays and manta rays, pufferfish .

AND THENNNNNNNNNNN

ze Galapagos!!!!!!

We stayed on San Cristobal and we had families here as well. Once again I had an awesome family. They had a 12 year daugher and a 21 year old son, but the son is in the navy/marines? so he stays in guayquil . They also had another gringa staying with them. She spoke very little spanish which is a shame. they also had a superrrrrr cute dog. We were on San Cristobal for maybe threeish days practicing our snorkeling skills and working on intertidal zones then we whent on an eight day boat trip. vahoohoo boat. and camera two died somewhere in here. i turn out to be a little bit of a butter fingers (or perhaps it was all that sunblock) and dropped the camera...but it was fine....until i brought it into the water. the drop made it the opposite of water proof......my bad. SORRY MOM

The boat venture started on Isla Santa Cruz. We looked at plants etc and then got on the boat. I also told a really funny joke that day about a girl and a swing. If you haven't heard it yet make sure I tell you RIGHT when I get back. It is a good one.

Day two we went to Isla Genovesa. We looked at lots of birdies. Such as boobies ( haha I saw boobies and tities on my study abroad. teheheheheh) there were lots of baby boobies and they were cute and fuzzy. There were also tons of frigate birds , many of the males with their pouches inflated to attract the females. The snorkeling at Genovesa was really awesome. Genovesa is shaped kindo of like a bowl with a bite taken out of it and along the walls were tons of christmas tree worms. Christmas tree worms are these darling lil sea worms that are all brightly colored and come in more colors then a crayola box and they look all spikey. If you wave your hand over them though they suck in their spikey things. While snorkeling we also say blue ching parrotfish, king angel fish, white tip sharks, a lobster, girant damsel, Morish Idol ( who can also be seen in Finding Nemo he is the one with the scar on his face), Blue and yellow snapper, Mexican hogfish, Razor Surgeonfish, bumped head damsel, and a hawksbill turtle (they are a lot harder to find). and yes I can still Id all of these fish. We also saw the Red-billed tropic bird. that more or less doesn't have legs, or legs that function wells so when it langs it just kind of crashes. we didn't get to see it crash though.
We also saw some fur sea lions different then galapagos sea lions, they have more fur and different noses.

Isla Bartolome-Isla Santiago (Sullivan bay) was our next stop.
At sullivan bay we looked at lava formations. There are seven different types I do believe. They are all black and they are all really hot. but Pahoahoa lava was the most common lava formations and it was smooth and kind of looked like ropes. We also "made snorkeling" here and saw a box fish, barber fish, white mouth moray, guenea fowl puffer, flag cabrilla, and a hierooglyphic hawkfish.

Then we were off to Isla Sombrero Chino- Isla Santa Cruz (Cerro Dragon)
At Sombrero Chino we had to do a field activing measuring different types of coral: Pavona, Pocillopora, and Tobastrea. The galapagos doesn't have very much coral and the current was also very strong that day making it difficult to swim in a straight line for transects. But we did get to see a blue starfish which was really pretty. On Santa Cruz we did some bird watching and also saw three land iguanas. They are a lot bigger than I had thought, and more yellow. Two of the iguanas were deep into a dual and one of them was rather bloody and got trapped in the burrow that the guide thought they were fighting for. It was a pretty good show.

Day Five we went to Isabela and visited the Breeding center. There were lots of tortoises and the babies would all climb over eachother to get places. We also checked out some flamingos and some more mangroves. Fun Fact: tortoises have a four month incubation

Day Six: Isla Fernandina and then back to Isla Isabela (Tagus Cove)
On Isla Fernandina we got to check out all of the marine iguanas online and then while we were snorkeling we got to se a few feeding as well. It was weird to see iguanas swim I wanted to be like hey you silly what are you doing in the water? but they can swim and that is where they get there food. While we were iguana watching on Isla Fernandina we also saw some Manta Rays jump out of the water in the distance. Our guide told us that it is though the females do this to try and out run the males during breeding, but my prof told us that it was males displaying. who knows? but they can jump REALLY REALLY REALLY high. you should probably youtube it. WE also saw the flightless cormorant which is a ridiculous looking bird. They just have shorty stubby little wings and they also have very thick feet for swimming. We also did some snorkeling here, but I'll stop listing all the species I see unless it is something super amazing. (which in truth should be everything I saw but this bad boy is getting pretty long)
Then in the afternoon we headed over to Tagus Cover for some more snorkeling ( we decided to skip our second land excursion this day and for a very good reason). One person counted that we saw over 50 pacific green sea turtles here.and I saw a loosetooth parrotfish. which isn't that pretty, just has a fun name. Then we were back on the boat and on a look out for whales and dolphins. What luck we had, becase we saw hundreds of Common Dolphins jumping, playing, frolicking in the beautiful Galapagos sunset.

Day Seven. Santiago Island (Puerto Egas)- Isla Rabida
Puerto Egas used to be a hot spot to find pirates and whalers who were looking for water, instead they found tortoises. So they would gather up as many as they can and just store them on their boats because tortoises can live along time w/out food or water and then once the sailors wanted a tortoise steak they could. Snorkeling here one of the cute things I saw was a barnacle blenny which is a really small fish that lives inside of barnacles and they just peep out. At Rabida we did a snorkeling activity to compare fish diversity and abundance over rocky and sandy substrate. Rocky substrate one by far.

Day eight. we went to a mangrove. we stayed in the lil zippy boats the whole time and looked at stuff from above the water like sharks adn eagle rays etc.


to be continued.....

including cute stories about playing with sea lioooooooons