Santa Cruz

A post from Samantha Juda

We spent the last week in Santa Cruz. It was a mixture of field trips for class, and vacation. On Tuesday we went to the Charles Darwin Research Station, where we listened to a view lectures and then “saw” Lonesome George. He is the last tortoise of his species, and there is no one for him to mate with. I say that we “saw” him, because it was pretty far away from the viewing station, and hidden behind a lot of plants, as you can see in the picture. But it was still great to meet him. We had Tuesday afternoon free so I went to Tortuga Bay with Mary, Brice, and Sarah. The book we are reading for class talked about the bay, and how beautiful it is. It is definitely worth the 45 minute walk! It is a long sandy beach with some of the finest sand I have ever felt. The waves are a beautiful blue, and you can see cacti in the distance. There are also many Marine Iguanas (my favorites) walking around in the sand, leaving their unique trails of footprints and tail lines. We relaxed by a little cove where the water is basically still, because we were told that the water by the waves has a lot of rip tides and can be very dangerous.

On Wednesday we went to Floreana Island. It is about a two-hour boat trip from Santa Cruz. Annie and I sat on the top of the boat with two other girls. I saw some birds along the way, but nothing can compare to the sights we saw as we arrived to the island - hundreds of dolphins jumping out and around the boat, greeting us as we pulled into the port. There must have been over 150. We watched in awe - and I couldn’t even stop to take out my camera, I was too amazed. After we pulled onto shore I took a few pictures of the jumping dolphins from a distance, but didn’t get any good enough to capture the amazing view we just had.

Floreana is a small island with only 100 residents. We took a bus up to the highlands where we saw the caves that the German settlers lived in with the arrived on the island. The island has a crazy history - with a Baroness moving there with her two lovers, and people mysteriously dying. In the afternoon we went snorkeling at a black sand beach before we headed back to Santa Cruz. That night we were walking around and hanging out with Annie’s “Primo” (who is from Santa Cruz but we met him on San Cristobal while he was studying English at the university). He was walking at his parents shop in the artisan market and introduced us to some of the other workers. They were sitting around playing music, and we joined in. One man was playing the guitar and singing, another was playing a donkey jaw, and the third was shaking Goat nails. Primo was drumming on a box. It was awesome! I went and got my ukulele and joined them, too. The guitarist borrowed my ukulele and started playing on it too - he didn’t even know what it was, and kept asking why it only had four strings. He played a beautiful song, that I couldn’t completely enjoy because I was worried that he would break the instrument from strumming too hard - luckily my uke survived, and we have a video of the song to enjoy!

Thursday - Thanksgiving - we went on a field trip to the highlands. We hiked on a trail to see the endemic Miconia plants. Our professor is so funny, and put moss on his face, pretending to be Darwin. After the hike we went to a hacienda to eat lunch and see some giant tortoises - at least with these we could stand really close, unlike Lonesome George. We took a ton of pictures with them, and then left to go into a lava tunnel. After we walked through the lava tunnel (nothing like the cave we climbed down on Isabela) we went to the Scalesia forest to see the trees we have been learning about in class. On our way back into town we stopped at the Recycling center for a quick tour. It was crazy how similar it was there to the place I went in Santa Clara to take pictures for my Photo Final last quarter. I took pictures at the center, that are so similar to the ones I took in the Spring! After we got back to the hotel GAIAS gave us cake and ice cream for Thanksgiving! They also had the local students make us Thanksgiving cards, which were really cute. A bunch of us decided to go to this restaurant where we could buy pie’s (we wanted to go there early to make sure they didn’t run out). I ate some Key Lime Pie, and THEN we went to get dinner - a delicious meal of Pizza! There is no way we could have found a typical thanksgiving meal while on Santa Cruz, so we decided that it would be best to eat what we have all been missing most. It was so perfect. We walked into the restaurant and it was busy with people who were watching the big soccer game - and what would be a thanksgiving in South America without a soccer game?! It was great!

Friday we went to Tortuga Bay as a group and played soccer in the sand and then played in the waves. After we spent hours on the beach it was time for us to take the two hour (bumpy) boat ride back to San Cristobal.

What a great week! Monday we will start our final class… and our last three weeks on the island. I don’t want to leave!