Isabella Island: Giant Tortoises

Isabella is the home of several subspecies of giant Tortoises. It is also home to one of the settled communities in the Galapagos. The pet dogs & cats are threatening the continued existence of the giant tortoises because they attack baby tortoises. For these reasons, there is an ecological preserve that functions as a 'hatchery' for the giant tortoises.

Our guide was a very enthusiastic Galapagos native who took great pride in Ecuador's efforts to protect the giant tortoises. In the photo he is holding a tortoise egg and the assistant is holding a 4 month old baby tortoise. They collect the eggs & put them in incubators, adjusting the temperature to produce more female tortoises than males. Tortoise gender is apparently determined by the incubating heat and warmer temps produce more females than males. The difference is only about 2 degrees. They are producing more females because of the population decline and they need fewer males to impregnate many females. They keep the small babies in wire cages so that predators cannot eat them before they grow up.

This preserve also has injured tortoises. The one pictures was burned in a fire on Isabella a number of years ago. The scars on the carapace are permanent.

Isabella Island - marine iguanas & penguins

Finally, with the swimming meets over, our focus turned to the fantastic animals of the Galapagos. For many of us, this was the main reason for this trip. Meeting other swimmers, competing, eating & drinking & dancing w/people from our host country was not why many of us came to Ecuador (although that was fun too). The real reason was to see what Darwin saw, to see living examples of evolution in action! And it was worth the wait.

On a day-long trip by boat to Isabella Island we saw was many of the animals that make the Galapagos so interesting.

Once we landed on Isabella (2 1/2 hour boat ride) we walked (bus didn't show up!) into town and were taken to an open-air restaurant for breakfast.  This was apparently included in the tour.  The restaurant was clearly trying to please our american taste buds but it wasn't quite on the mark.  Very good food, but not exactly typical fare for Californians.  Good, though.  

We saw marine iguanas - black ocean-going creatures that look very like minature dinasauers. Looking very fierce, they are actually not very aggressive towards or bothered by humans, typical of many of the animals on the Galapagos. The marine iguanas were easy to see as well, being cold-blooded they spent much of their time warming up on black rocks before diving back into the cool ocean to find food.

The penguins which winter in the Galapagos had arrived in time for our visit (they knew we were coming!). They are the northern-most penguins in the world, swimming up from anarctica every winter (which starts in June in the Southern Hemisphere). Our boat didn't get up close to the penguins so the photo of them was taken at some distance. But still, it was nice to see them!

A baby sea lion was very curious about us too. Of course, we have sea lions in California but it was fun to watch it play for our attention!

First Open water swim Galapagos History!

Our club, together with Ecuadorian clubs organized the first ever open water swim in the Galapagos. OK, admittedly, it was in the bay at Porta Ayorta so not a rough water swim at all. It was however my FIRST open water swim and perhaps my last! I do prefer swimming pools! The salty water was awful & I gagged but quickly switched to backstroke, my best stroke and one that kept my mouth & nose out of the water.

There was a swarm/school of tiny jellyfish (what is a collection of jelly fish called??? Herd? Mob? School?) and those who swam the longer distance (5K) were stung a lot. The antidote to stinging welts was vinegar!! The coach sent someone across the street to the local store to get a bottle. It quickly ended the stinging.

Those of us who swam the shorter distance (2k) were apparently on the edge of the Jellyfish swarm and only a few of us experiences stings, and minor ones at that.

We used water taxis to take us out to the starting point in the bay (see picture above) and then we jumped off the boat & lined up (roughly) and the Ecuadorian official blew the start whistle. Then we tried to find our way into the dock. Since it was my first open water swim, I had no experience 'sighting' so I repeatedly went off course. Eventually Nancy, a terrific person, and I swam together and finished together. The second picture is of me as I am swimming free style to reach the dock. The 5K swimmers were on the dock taking pictures & yelling encouragement. It was almost fun.

Hotel in Galapagos

Our hotel was very modest, to say the least.  Funky would also serve as a description.  It appeared to be a house that was converted into a hotel, with rooms added on here & there.  My two roommates and I had a nice airy room with screens where the window glass might have been.  It featured a large painting that we all became very fond of (see the picture above).  

The room was intended for 4 people and had one small bathroom with no hot water.  On our next-to-last day our hostess (who lived there & ran the hotel with her mother), was 'shocked' to hear that we didn't have hot water.  She tried to fix it (it was 'on-demand' rather than coming from a hot water heater) but it didn't seem to make any difference.  The weather was warm enough that it didn't matter much anyway.  The beds were aligned so we could talk at night if we wanted.  My roommates were terrific and we had several nice 'happy hours' drinking the wine Morgana had the foresight to bring from Guayaquil!  

Galapagos & giant tortoise Farm

We landed on Baltra, a former WWII base for America and currently one of the Airports located in the Galapagos. The airport was nice, open-aired so the wind breezed thru the airport. We paid our $100 admission fee to the Galapagos National Park and were taken to the ferry that took us across a strait to the Island of Santa Cruz.

Instead of going straight to our hotel, we immediately were taken to see the highlands of Santa Cruz, which are not high by California standards. Rain and mist wafted over us as we viewed the sights. It was amazing to go from the humid air port, to the rainy highlands, in a matter of 45 minutes or so.

The giant tortoise farm had giant tortoises wandering loose around a larged fenced area (several acres). Before finding any tortoises, we encountered scat, giant scat as might be expected from a giant tortoise. It was in fact giant tortoise poop. Shortly after encountering the scat, we saw the source. One of my roomates and I are pictured with our first giant tortoise.

Off to the Galapagos!

With the first swimming meet out of the way, we are finally on our way to Galapagos, the main reason for the trip (for most of us). Several of us, desperate for a good cup of coffee, walked over to a more expensive hotel than our own and got real, brewed coffee before catching our early morning flight. As the picture shows, despite the early hour, we were happy with our coffee!

Winning Relay

One of the advantages of being an older swimmer is outliving the competition! Since only two ecuadorian women over the age of 55 were competing, the DAM 55+ women won the 4x100 relay. Although 3 of us are 60+, we had to compete in the age group of our youngest swimmer, Nancy. Pictured are Betty, Nancy, Leslie & Me.

Brass Band

Did I mention the brass band? Yep, they had a brass band play a few numbers. It was either a police brass band or a transit police band, don't remember which. Ecuadorians do like their ceremonies! This is the only swim meet with a live brass brand that I can recall in my entire life. The Ecuadorians certainly know how to make things special!

Pomp & Circumstances at the Swim Meet

The Ecuadorians like pomp & circumstance and they started the swim meet with a parade, unexpected by us since swim meets in the USA usually start with a blow of the whistle. But suddenly, we had to line up and then they got the officials in some sort of order (not understood by us, probably head official first, stroke & turn judges following, etc) and then this woman in high heels and a dress was put into the parade (see picture, the woman with the pink color in her dress). She was the only person wearing a dress at the pool. I asked who she was & what her function was, and one of the Ecuadorian swimmers explained, in broken English, that she didn't know who she was but it was customary to have a pretty woman at the head of a parade. I wondered if she was Miss Guayaquil (or maybe the reigning virgin of Guayaquil. . . . just a though I didn't utter). And then we and the Ecuadorian Team and the one swimmer from Brazil paraded around the pool (I am wearing my swim cap since I was in the first heat).

The Swim Meet

This trip to Ecuador was a Swim Team Trip (Davis Aquatic Masters), so naturally, at some point, we had to compete. In fact, we had two competitive swims on this trip, a pool meet in Guayaquil and an open water swim in the Galapagos! The first open water swim ever in the Galapagos!

Our host was an Ecuadorian swim team located in Guayaquil. Our swim coach was a peace corp volunteer in Ecuador back in the 1960s and his job was to coach young ecuadorians. The fruit of his labor, adult swimmers, hosted us and put on the swim meet.

We were not very wide awake when we arrived at the swimming pool. The lack of decent coffee (Ecuadorians, like many Latin Americans, love their instant Nescafe. Good, freshly brewed coffee was difficult to find in Ecuador) was taking its toll. All of us could have used a double shot expresso. As could the Ecuadorians since they were not moving very fast either. The meet was suppose to start at 9 a.m. but didn’t start until almost 11:00.

Beach at Salinas

Because it was not warm, most of us sat on the sand, under rented umbrellas ($5 a day), as the bathing beauties in the picture did. Only a few got in the water (except Ryan and Becky and their dad, pictured). Myself, I walked up and down the beach and took pictures of those sunning themselves and fended off trinket salsement. It wasn't quite the warm, sunny day at the beach that we had hoped for!

Lonely Beach

Because it was winter and a weekday, there were few people at the beach except for the swim team, and many things were not open. This didn't deter the ubiquitous sellers of trinkets. Their prices were low and I bought an anklet and a few other trinkets for gifts. They loved me, but then their affection was easy to come by! I was struck by the fact that many of their pendants were carved pictures of Che Guevera.

A day at the Beach

We spent an afternoon in the Beach resort town of Salinas, several hours south of Guayaquil. June is a winter month in Ecuador and the weather at the beach was overcast and not very warm. We had lunch first, before hitting the beach, at a Cerviche place, which was rather overwhelmed by the size our our group. While waiting for cerveza, we took pictures of each other. On the right is a picture of my lane mate Rick, me, my roommate Ulrike and swim pal Tony. This was taken by Tony’s wife Cathi. My hair was still wet from rinsing all the aloe vera out of it. The beer was good and our table of 5 finished off something like 7 quarts before the ceviche arrived, but then Ulrike is German and she does like her beer!

massage

After soaking the requisite 20 minutes we went back to the massage building to get our massages. The massage could be either mud or aloe vera. After seeing one of my roommates covered with mud (see picture left), I quickly changed my mind and chose an Aloe vera gel massage, as did everyone else! One person said she felt as if she was being massaged with snot. It was gelatinous but I still think it was better than the mud. For adult over the age of 60, the admission fee was waived and the cost for the medicinal massage was $4. Another advantage to aging!

Banos San Vicente

One day we skipped swim workout and went on a trip to the beach. On the way we stopped at a thermal spa, one that featured mud baths, mud messages and thermal pools. Before we could get a massage, we had to soak for 20 minutes in the hot mineral springs. We were supposed to be silent but obviously we weren’t.

Guayaquil Historical Park

The Historical Park was one of the nicest places in Guayaquil. It had several natural ecological areas (e.g., mangrove riperian habitat) as well historical buildings, a botanical park (see picture to left) and various indigenous animals, including the green parrots pictured below.

Friendly People

When we went places in our buses, citizens would wave at us. At first I thought they
were being sarcastic, but I eventually realized they were happy to see tourists in their
city. This happened even in Guayaquil, Ecuador's biggest city.One day we stopped
for lunch (take-out sandwiches we were going to eat on the bus) and the buses parked next to a
school. When the lunch bell rang, the kids came out and were excited to see the tourist buses.
Jane, an elementary teacher, who speaks Spanish andmy room mate Claudia talked to the children and the kids were very delighted by the attention.

The kids were very interested in us and our cameras. One girl (the heavy girl in the picture on the right) insisted I take a picture of her and her friends. After I took their pictures, they gathered around to look at the pictures in the LCD. They were delighted with the results. They were polite yet confident.

Jugo Stand

One distinctive thing about Guayaquil was the Jugo stands (juice) on street corners. Ecuador sits right on the equator (hence the name!) and it has an abundance of tropical fruit. The picture at the right shows a stand that featured a greenish-orange fruit they called “Naranja” meaning orange but it wasn’t like our orange but it was some type of related citrus. One of my roommates and another swimmer are buying Jugos for 60 cents (Ecuador’s dollar is based on our dollar); the guy would juice 6 fruit and pour the results into a plastic cup. Since he didn’t add any water and since he had a high turnover, it was OK to drink the jugo. I needed to add azucar (sugar) but most people didn’t. It was excellent!!! I loved the availability of fresh, inexpensive juices all over town. My favorite was a strawberry jugo.

Guayaquil

Santiago de Guayaquil is the largest and most populous city in Ecuador, with a population of over 2 1/2 million. It is also the main port and industrial city. It is a gritty town of modest charms and it was obvious that it doesn’t receive many tourists. It had an unattractive architecture style common
to much of Latin American where the ground floors are shops that have a steel roll-down door when it is closed. These ground-floor stores had no windows. The people, however, are nice.

Ecuador 2008

It was a lovely summer evening, still light at 8:00 p.m., when we departed Davis from Civic Center Pool in two rented school buses. Yes, seriously, rented school buses! Granted, it was cheap and for cheap we got a bumpy ride, without air conditioning to the Oakland airport. The line was very long and we had a lengthy wait in line at Grupo TACA airlines, the airline of Latin American. We nicknamed it “Taco airlines.” We were 3 hours early and we still barely made the plane (Coach Rick, pictured, counted heads as we found our seats in the airplane). Airline managed to demonstrate all the maddening disorganization that cliches attribute to Latin America. It took two clerks to process each ticket and the printout for each ticket was approximately 5 feet long (seriously). It was so long because the plane puddled-jumped its way thru central America and our luggage needed tags for the various stops and plane changes (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salavador and finally Ecuador, landing first in Quito and then in our destination city of Guayaquil). Most of us managed to sleep after the plane took off at 1:30 a.m., at least until we reached central America.

Travels with Candace: Purpose

I am starting this blog to share travel experiences and photos with friends and selected family members. So, it is meant to be more of a travelog than a true blog.  I am not sure what the difference is between a blog and a narrative but I am thinking this will be more of a travel narrative, with lots of pictures.