Things had been getting a little slow here, but it's starting to pick up now. Today I caught another big Green Turtle and did all of the measurements, DNA sampling, and tagging myself. Last Saturday there was a big parade and street party for the start of the whale season (and, more importantly I suspect, tourist season), and more and more gringos have been trickling in every day. And this Saturday I get to go back to the Island with Angelo and Sandra, and this time we'll be accompanied by a grad student from South Carolina who's studying the birds there. I get to learn how to capture and band them so I can teach more volunteers how to do the same. I'm really excited to go back, and even more excited for my plans afterward.
I talked to Gabi today about taking a week-long vacation to go do some more traveling, and she's working on getting me a sort of volunteer swap with another organization. We still have to make some calls to see where there will be a spot open, but it sounds like there are three options. One of them would be tracking bears in the cloud forest on the slopes of the mountains, and another is a science station in the middle of the Amazon! I haven't really heard what the third one would be, but I think it's also in the cloud forest.
I don't really have much more to report right now until I find out about the volunteering, but I'm sure you must have questions about things I haven't written about yet, so I'll get back online tomorrow night before I leave to give another update.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Transportation
Getting around (or watching others do the same) can be pretty funny here. The two travel concepts here that diverge most from ours are that there is no maximum occupancy for any vehicle and that no vehicle is designed to carry just one person. You might think this meant that there are strange, enlarged cars and weird motorcycles here, but that's not really the case (well, there are some interesting motorcycle derivatives, but I'll get there in a minute). Really, people here are just more creative/daring in their loading techniques.
I've seen lots of bicycles with little wooden seats added to the bar in front of the normal one, which serve both for extra capacity and to let little guys reach the peddles. Most of them also have pegs on the axles for standing passengers, and it's not uncommon to see three people on one bike -- one driving, one on the handlebars or extra seat, and one standing on the back. Motorcycles, in comparison, offer much more room, and are the ride of choice for small families. The record so far is 5 on a motorcycle, but at this point I wouldn't be too surprised to see a 6th squeezed in somewhere. Usually it'll be a dad with a small kid in front of him and a smaller one packed between him and mom on the back.
The same concept applies to cars. One restaurant owner Peter and I were talking to this week was showing us an old car he was restoring (it had a honda engine in it, but no marks on the outside, and I couldn't tell what it might have been. It had to have been a good 50 years old at least.) and explained that what he really liked about it was that even though it was pretty small, it had a lot of room. "It fits eight people! Three in the front here, and five in the back! I take my whole family to church in it." Despite the cramming of the insides, though, it's not common to see the exteriors loaded down with passengers and cargo like you see in pictures from other places. That probably wouldn't be safe. Cars really aren't very common here anyway. Most vehicles you'll see will be cargo trucks and buses, with the occasional pickup and lots of bikes and motos (all of which, despite the machismo attitudes of their riders, have at most a 200cc motor). Maybe the most common, though, is the mototaxi.
These usually use the front half of a motorcycle attached to a rickshaw kind of covered seat (3-5 person capacity) with a little cargo area in back (3-4 people once again for large parties). Some of them have the front wheel of the cycle replaced with a big cargo bin, but those are usually for carrying goods to market. The weird thing is that mototaxis are everywhere. There are 3 or 4 on the quietest streets at all times, and loads around the market or fish market on the beach -- more than you would think there would ever need to be in a town this size. But people use them all the time. They're great if you have something big or heavy to carry, but the definitions of "too big" or "too heavy" to carry. as well as that of "too far," are vastly different to Ecuadorians. For example, if one needed to transport a small dive bag with a couple of wetsuits and pairs of fins the 4 or 5 blocks to the boat, an American volunteer wouldn't think of hiring a taxi, while an Ecuadorian wouldn't usually consider walking. Just one of the many wonders of foreign travel, I guess.
I've seen lots of bicycles with little wooden seats added to the bar in front of the normal one, which serve both for extra capacity and to let little guys reach the peddles. Most of them also have pegs on the axles for standing passengers, and it's not uncommon to see three people on one bike -- one driving, one on the handlebars or extra seat, and one standing on the back. Motorcycles, in comparison, offer much more room, and are the ride of choice for small families. The record so far is 5 on a motorcycle, but at this point I wouldn't be too surprised to see a 6th squeezed in somewhere. Usually it'll be a dad with a small kid in front of him and a smaller one packed between him and mom on the back.
The same concept applies to cars. One restaurant owner Peter and I were talking to this week was showing us an old car he was restoring (it had a honda engine in it, but no marks on the outside, and I couldn't tell what it might have been. It had to have been a good 50 years old at least.) and explained that what he really liked about it was that even though it was pretty small, it had a lot of room. "It fits eight people! Three in the front here, and five in the back! I take my whole family to church in it." Despite the cramming of the insides, though, it's not common to see the exteriors loaded down with passengers and cargo like you see in pictures from other places. That probably wouldn't be safe. Cars really aren't very common here anyway. Most vehicles you'll see will be cargo trucks and buses, with the occasional pickup and lots of bikes and motos (all of which, despite the machismo attitudes of their riders, have at most a 200cc motor). Maybe the most common, though, is the mototaxi.
These usually use the front half of a motorcycle attached to a rickshaw kind of covered seat (3-5 person capacity) with a little cargo area in back (3-4 people once again for large parties). Some of them have the front wheel of the cycle replaced with a big cargo bin, but those are usually for carrying goods to market. The weird thing is that mototaxis are everywhere. There are 3 or 4 on the quietest streets at all times, and loads around the market or fish market on the beach -- more than you would think there would ever need to be in a town this size. But people use them all the time. They're great if you have something big or heavy to carry, but the definitions of "too big" or "too heavy" to carry. as well as that of "too far," are vastly different to Ecuadorians. For example, if one needed to transport a small dive bag with a couple of wetsuits and pairs of fins the 4 or 5 blocks to the boat, an American volunteer wouldn't think of hiring a taxi, while an Ecuadorian wouldn't usually consider walking. Just one of the many wonders of foreign travel, I guess.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Food
Ha, the food is an interesting subject. The touristy places have everything you'd expect, with the prices to match, but at the local restaurants we've been going to there isn't a whole lot of variety. For lunch and dinner they'll usually have one or two soup choices (shrimp, chicken, fish, or beef bone; all pretty similar except for the choice of meat) and one or two meat choices for your main dish (shrimp, chicken, fish, or beef; all served with rice, beans, and plantain chips). Everything tastes great, and I especially love the plantain chips, which are much better than potato in my opinion, but there really don't seem to be any other dishes. I was talking to Gabi about it on the island, and she told me what happened when she made some Indian food one time: people just thought it was kind of weird tasting and said they preferred the more traditional things.
For snacking there are a few other choices -- cheese empanadas (You can only really find one kind of cheese here. It's pretty young and soft and a little briny tasting, but I'm starting to like it), a kind of corn-flour dough stuffed with onions and cheese and then deep-fried (its name escapes me at the moment), ceviches (cold soup made with fish and tomato and lime juice), and grilled over-ripe plantains, which are delicious.
There are plenty of bakeries around too, and you can get a big breakfast assortment for 50 cents or less.
For snacking there are a few other choices -- cheese empanadas (You can only really find one kind of cheese here. It's pretty young and soft and a little briny tasting, but I'm starting to like it), a kind of corn-flour dough stuffed with onions and cheese and then deep-fried (its name escapes me at the moment), ceviches (cold soup made with fish and tomato and lime juice), and grilled over-ripe plantains, which are delicious.
There are plenty of bakeries around too, and you can get a big breakfast assortment for 50 cents or less.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Pictures!
It looks like it's going to be pretty hard to post a lot of pictures on the blog (although I will admit I finally figured out how to do it just before I started typing this post), so I made an account on photobucket.com and posted a bunch of them. I think you should be able to look at them without creating an account. Just search for Rico221 and let me know if you have any problems.
This week we've been going turtle capturing every day, which means going out snorkeling over some of the most beautiful reefs I've seen and snatching sleeping turtles from under the rocks. I caught a little tiny hawksbill yesterday (just over a foot across his shell), which was awesome because they're hard to find (they don't eat fish, so we can't bait them in) and it was the only one we got all day. Equilibrio Azul is the first organization in the world to identify a hawksbill aggregation area (somewhere where a lot of them hang out in one place), which was so unexpected that people didn't believe them when they first announced it.
In other news, a new volunteer arrived unexpectedly a couple days ago. His name is Peter and he's from Syracuse, New York. He looks and acts so much like Jamie Muldoon it's almost scary. Since the staff has a long weekend starting today (they say since they worked on the island all last weekend they deserve one), Peter and Ailis and I are asking Gabi if we can go to the island tomorrow and hang out for a couple of days while we show Pete how the turtle and albatross patrols work. I haven't checked my email yet this morning to see her answer, but we're crossing our fingers.
Other than that, I've been working on my hatchery research (when the power's on), chatting with a long-winded restaurant owner named Ulbio over lunch, taking long walks on the beach, and reading whatever books in English I can find around the house (I actually just finished a really good one about artists illustrating a secret book for the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire). If you see this in the first half-hour or hour after I post it the pictures might not all be up, but they look like they'll at least finish without incident.
This week we've been going turtle capturing every day, which means going out snorkeling over some of the most beautiful reefs I've seen and snatching sleeping turtles from under the rocks. I caught a little tiny hawksbill yesterday (just over a foot across his shell), which was awesome because they're hard to find (they don't eat fish, so we can't bait them in) and it was the only one we got all day. Equilibrio Azul is the first organization in the world to identify a hawksbill aggregation area (somewhere where a lot of them hang out in one place), which was so unexpected that people didn't believe them when they first announced it.
In other news, a new volunteer arrived unexpectedly a couple days ago. His name is Peter and he's from Syracuse, New York. He looks and acts so much like Jamie Muldoon it's almost scary. Since the staff has a long weekend starting today (they say since they worked on the island all last weekend they deserve one), Peter and Ailis and I are asking Gabi if we can go to the island tomorrow and hang out for a couple of days while we show Pete how the turtle and albatross patrols work. I haven't checked my email yet this morning to see her answer, but we're crossing our fingers.
Other than that, I've been working on my hatchery research (when the power's on), chatting with a long-winded restaurant owner named Ulbio over lunch, taking long walks on the beach, and reading whatever books in English I can find around the house (I actually just finished a really good one about artists illustrating a secret book for the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire). If you see this in the first half-hour or hour after I post it the pictures might not all be up, but they look like they'll at least finish without incident.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Back in Town
Well, things have been pretty slow around here lately. No turtle patrol since the island is the only place where they nest year-round and the season is over here. I got assigned to my own project, which is to research, design, and build a new hatchery on the island for next year. It's been fun working on figuring that out, but also a little frustrating since the power goes out a few times a day. On Saturday night it went about 6:00 and didn't come back on until noon yesterday.
I think though that things will start picking up again this week. We're going to be out capturing turtles again, and starting Tuesday we'll be looking for Hawksbills, which are more rare and supposedly prettier than Greens. The thing is they're not attracted to fish guts as bait, so we'll be diving with tanks to go find them! I'll let you all know how it goes when I get back tomorrow night.
I think though that things will start picking up again this week. We're going to be out capturing turtles again, and starting Tuesday we'll be looking for Hawksbills, which are more rare and supposedly prettier than Greens. The thing is they're not attracted to fish guts as bait, so we'll be diving with tanks to go find them! I'll let you all know how it goes when I get back tomorrow night.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Isla de la Plata
So I just got back from the island Wednesday afternoon. My first shower in 8 days felt awesome, but I was a little sad to be leaving. I loved it out there. For the first two days we had to do the monthly bird census, where we try to count as best we can all the nesting seabirds. I was there during the end of nesting season for the Nazca Boobies, and there were tons. The island is about three miles long, with one trail that loops around the western half and one on the eastern half. I thought it was going to be impossible to count all the nesting birds, but it turned out to be a lot easier than I thought, because they all divide up the island into distinct nesting zones. The Nazcas only nest on flat ground on two points, one on each end of the island. Blue-footed Boobies only nest on the cliff-sides, and the Red-footed ones use trees along the cliffs of the North edge. Even though they all eat fish and are about the same size and shape, they never intermingle.
So on day one we went to Punta Machete, which is kind of the south-west corner. It took about 45 minutes to walk there from the ranger house, which is right in the middle of the northern beach. We divided the point into three zones and each marked how many nesting pairs, single birds, and chicks we saw. Punta Machete is also where the albatross were hanging out. They're beautiful birds, and Isla de la Plata is one of the only two islands in the world where they nest. (This is just for the Galapagos Albatross. There are other species that aren't so critically endangered.) On day 2 we took the other trail to Punta Escalera to count the other Nazca colony, and on the way we got to stop and see the Red-footed Boobies and the Frigate birds. The frigate birds reminded me of dinosaurs. They have long beaks that they click together and really long wings for their body size, and just the way they all sat in their trees clacking and croaking make me think of pterodactyls. Their wings don't have the water-proof coating that all the other birds do, so they have to snatch stuff from the surface or steal it from other birds mid-air to eat -- people call them the pirates of the air. Frigate males are also the ones that have the big red throat pouches that they inflate to attract females. I think their nesting season starts pretty soon, so they'll be the ones we count next month.
After the census was done, we still tried to go out hiking once a day to find the albatross. Every time you see them you have to put a waypoint on the GPS to mark where they are and record the numbers on their leg bands. Our other big job on the island though was turtle patrol. Every night you take out your red flashlights and patrol the beach at 8:00, 9:00, 11:00, 1:00, 3:00, and 6:00. Needless to say, if you're alone on the island you get pretty tired. Most of the time there were a couple other volunteers or employees with me and we would split up the shifts, so it wasn't so bad. Only Green Turtles really nest very often on the island, but it's one of the few places they keep coming to year-round. I learned how to tell all the different species apart (Ecuador has 4 of the 7 kinds of sea turtles) and what to do when you see them nesting or hatching (you have to take a bunch of measurements and check their tag numbers. If they're not tagged you also have to tag them and take a DNA sample from the skin on their necks. You can do that while they're laying the eggs because they go into a sort of trance and don't really notice anything until they've finished covering up the nest). There was only one night when a couple came up to try and nest, and those all turned back without laying. We think it was because the sand was too rocky for them to dig a good hole. But we had hatchlings coming up about half the nights I was there.
All the ones I saw came from the hatchery (or vivero in Spanish), which is where we relocate any clutches that get laid below the tide-line. When the tortuguitas (tor-too-ghee-tahs) come up you measure their shells and then pick them up (only with gloves on) and put them outside the little fence that runs around the hatchery, and then protect them from crabs as they crawl down to the water. You can't just carry them all the way because crawling down the beach is how they imprint on it and know where to come back to to lay their own eggs. Sometimes if the lights were on at the house they wouldn't know where to go, and you'd have to use your headlamp to show them down to the water. Once they've made it, they swim straight out to sea for 72 hours, and then they live out in the open water for a few years where there are fewer predators until they're big enough to come back to the coast. My boss, Gabi, says it takes them 40 years to grow to full size and sexual maturity, and the weird thing is that nobody really knows where the adult turtles live or what they do. The ones that live near shorelines aren't actually adults yet, and they leave before they're full grown. (The ones we saw trying to nest were huge, like 3 feet across the shell and 80-100 pounds!)
A couple of days before I left a few more employees, Ricardo, Luis, and José Luis, came and joined Gabi and me, and we got to take a little boat out (smaller than the one at the cabin) to catch turtles in the bay for tagging. Luis and I would hop out with snorkels and fins while the others chummed the water, and when the turtles came in we'd have to dive down and grab them by the front and back of the shell and wrestle them up to the surface where the boat crew would pull them in to take measurements and DNA samples and tag them. I got to do the tagging and sampling a couple of times, too, which was neat. The turtles are understandably not at all pleased to be in the boat, and they thrash and hiss and scramble around for a couple of minutes until you put a wet t-shirt over their heads, and then they usually calm down a little bit. You have to be kind of careful, because even though they can't usually hurt you it does not feel good to have a 60 pound turtle smack you in the ankle with its front flippers. Sometimes they try to bite, too. I've never seen them actually get anyone, but they have super strong jaws and sharp beaks with spiky teeth inside.
Back in Puerto López things have been pretty slow, since all the staff members stayed behind when I came back. I've been hanging out with the other volunteers, who are all really nice. There's Angelo from Italy, Ailis (Ae-lish) from Scotland, Jen from Eugene, Oregon, and the Canadians Connor and Nils, who live near Toronto. I think today Andrés, one of E. Azul's directors, is coming to stay for a while, and Gabi says I'll be starting on a new project soon, so I should have something new to write about by later tonight or tomorrow morning.
So on day one we went to Punta Machete, which is kind of the south-west corner. It took about 45 minutes to walk there from the ranger house, which is right in the middle of the northern beach. We divided the point into three zones and each marked how many nesting pairs, single birds, and chicks we saw. Punta Machete is also where the albatross were hanging out. They're beautiful birds, and Isla de la Plata is one of the only two islands in the world where they nest. (This is just for the Galapagos Albatross. There are other species that aren't so critically endangered.) On day 2 we took the other trail to Punta Escalera to count the other Nazca colony, and on the way we got to stop and see the Red-footed Boobies and the Frigate birds. The frigate birds reminded me of dinosaurs. They have long beaks that they click together and really long wings for their body size, and just the way they all sat in their trees clacking and croaking make me think of pterodactyls. Their wings don't have the water-proof coating that all the other birds do, so they have to snatch stuff from the surface or steal it from other birds mid-air to eat -- people call them the pirates of the air. Frigate males are also the ones that have the big red throat pouches that they inflate to attract females. I think their nesting season starts pretty soon, so they'll be the ones we count next month.
After the census was done, we still tried to go out hiking once a day to find the albatross. Every time you see them you have to put a waypoint on the GPS to mark where they are and record the numbers on their leg bands. Our other big job on the island though was turtle patrol. Every night you take out your red flashlights and patrol the beach at 8:00, 9:00, 11:00, 1:00, 3:00, and 6:00. Needless to say, if you're alone on the island you get pretty tired. Most of the time there were a couple other volunteers or employees with me and we would split up the shifts, so it wasn't so bad. Only Green Turtles really nest very often on the island, but it's one of the few places they keep coming to year-round. I learned how to tell all the different species apart (Ecuador has 4 of the 7 kinds of sea turtles) and what to do when you see them nesting or hatching (you have to take a bunch of measurements and check their tag numbers. If they're not tagged you also have to tag them and take a DNA sample from the skin on their necks. You can do that while they're laying the eggs because they go into a sort of trance and don't really notice anything until they've finished covering up the nest). There was only one night when a couple came up to try and nest, and those all turned back without laying. We think it was because the sand was too rocky for them to dig a good hole. But we had hatchlings coming up about half the nights I was there.
All the ones I saw came from the hatchery (or vivero in Spanish), which is where we relocate any clutches that get laid below the tide-line. When the tortuguitas (tor-too-ghee-tahs) come up you measure their shells and then pick them up (only with gloves on) and put them outside the little fence that runs around the hatchery, and then protect them from crabs as they crawl down to the water. You can't just carry them all the way because crawling down the beach is how they imprint on it and know where to come back to to lay their own eggs. Sometimes if the lights were on at the house they wouldn't know where to go, and you'd have to use your headlamp to show them down to the water. Once they've made it, they swim straight out to sea for 72 hours, and then they live out in the open water for a few years where there are fewer predators until they're big enough to come back to the coast. My boss, Gabi, says it takes them 40 years to grow to full size and sexual maturity, and the weird thing is that nobody really knows where the adult turtles live or what they do. The ones that live near shorelines aren't actually adults yet, and they leave before they're full grown. (The ones we saw trying to nest were huge, like 3 feet across the shell and 80-100 pounds!)
A couple of days before I left a few more employees, Ricardo, Luis, and José Luis, came and joined Gabi and me, and we got to take a little boat out (smaller than the one at the cabin) to catch turtles in the bay for tagging. Luis and I would hop out with snorkels and fins while the others chummed the water, and when the turtles came in we'd have to dive down and grab them by the front and back of the shell and wrestle them up to the surface where the boat crew would pull them in to take measurements and DNA samples and tag them. I got to do the tagging and sampling a couple of times, too, which was neat. The turtles are understandably not at all pleased to be in the boat, and they thrash and hiss and scramble around for a couple of minutes until you put a wet t-shirt over their heads, and then they usually calm down a little bit. You have to be kind of careful, because even though they can't usually hurt you it does not feel good to have a 60 pound turtle smack you in the ankle with its front flippers. Sometimes they try to bite, too. I've never seen them actually get anyone, but they have super strong jaws and sharp beaks with spiky teeth inside.
Back in Puerto López things have been pretty slow, since all the staff members stayed behind when I came back. I've been hanging out with the other volunteers, who are all really nice. There's Angelo from Italy, Ailis (Ae-lish) from Scotland, Jen from Eugene, Oregon, and the Canadians Connor and Nils, who live near Toronto. I think today Andrés, one of E. Azul's directors, is coming to stay for a while, and Gabi says I'll be starting on a new project soon, so I should have something new to write about by later tonight or tomorrow morning.
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