Welcome to the GAIAS blog!

This blog was created in December 2011 to help future students get an "inside look" into what it's like to study in this unique place.

On the Home Page you'll find all the blog posts in the order they were saved. Scroll around to see what previous students had to say about their experiences here! Some posts were written specifically for this blog while others are pulled from blogs that students had already been keeping. You can also see posts on specific topics by viewing the labels on the left hand columns.

Also check out the different tabs for more information on studying here!

Enjoy!!!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Field Trip #2


A post from Corinne Dorais

Sorry I haven’t updated–internet has been out on the island!

I took a field trip with my class last week. We were all a little nervous given that our last field trip was to the dump. The dump was interesting, but this trip was a lot more fun. We left campus around 8:30 in the morning and drove all of 45 seconds before reaching our first stop. We went to a café in town called Mockingbird. They serve organic coffee grown here on San Cristobal. We each sipped a cup of hot coffee while watching a short video about the harvesting and processing of the coffee.
From Mockingbird, we drove up into the highlands to visit Hacienda Tranquila. Hacienda Tranquila is a really cool organization. They work a lot with the community to promote sustainable farming practices and education about endemic plants. I also volunteer at the hacienda sometimes, so I’ll write more about that later.

From the hacienda, we drove to the coffee plantation where we ate raw coffee beans and saw all the equipment used to process the coffee. We weren’t there during a harvest time, so there wasn’t anything being processed but we spoke with one of the managers and he walked us through all the steps.
From the plantation we drove to El Junco. El Junco is a lake (one of the only freshwater lakes in the Galapagos.) It formed when rain collected in the caldera of the volcano (no longer active) that formed the island. As it used to be the top of the volcano, it is the highest place on the island. We hiked up to the top and had a beautiful panoramic view of the island.

Following El Junco we went to the Galapaguera (after a quick stop for lunch.) The Galapaguera is a breeding station for the giant tortoises that are endemic to San Cristobal. One of the guides from the National Park explained there are 11 species of giant tortoises in the world, 10 of which are from the Galapagos. Of those 10 species, 9 can be found in the wild. The only species that cannot be found in the wild is _______(can’t remember). That’s because there is only one individual left of that species (Lonesome George.) When he dies, the species will be extinct. He is currently in captivity on Santa Cruz island.

After the Galapaguera, we visited Porto Chino, a beautiful beach. The water there was even warmer than here in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno and there was a nice wave break. There were so many sea turtles there that we bumped into a few while we were swimming. Porto Chino is one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen here.

By the time we finished swimming at Porto Chino, it was past 5:00 and we needed to return to town. As we were driving down from the highlands we saw a gorgeous sunset over Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. It was a pretty amazing day.

I leave in a few hours for a trip to several of the other islands. I won’t have access to my computer or the internet while I’m gone, but hopefully the internet will be fixed when we return! If so, I’ll update the blog and pictures next weekend. Talk to you in a week!

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