Rusty's Great Adventures: July 2016

Ecuador - Return to Quito

Today was mostly a travel day to return from the Galápagos Islands to Quito. We drove to the north part of the Santa Cruz Island to take a short ferry ride over to Baltra Island where we could catch our flight.

They piled all our luggage on top of the ferry which made some of us a little nervous.

The airport is on Baltra because in the 1940's the Ecuador government let the US build a navy base on the island to help protect the Panama Canal during the war. After the war, the US tore down the base and left the airstrip for Ecuador to use to bring people to the islands.

Once we were settled into our hotel in Quito, we visited the Mindalae Museum of Ethno-Historic Handicrafts of Ecuador. We learned about the ancient cultures of Ecuador and their various crafts such as pottery, weaving, music, and costumes. It was a great way to explore the cultures of the indigenous highland Indians, the Afro-Ecuadorians, the Amazonian Indians and the ‘Montubian’ coastal people.

After our tour of the museum, we had our farewell banquet there. It was a wonderful time to share some of our most memorable parts of the trip. Our group has been fantastic at being together and forging friendships.

Starting from the left front going clockwise: Jeff, Lulu (our fearless tour leader), Mary Beth, Betty, Karen ( my Snickers bar buddy), Martha, me, Laurie, Suzanne, Lucy, Phil, and Gale. CHEERS!

Galápagos - Day Four

Today we left the boat after 3 nights and went to the Santa Cruz Island. We visited the Darwin Research Center where they are studying the various island's ecological systems and the impact of human interaction both from the past 80 years and what might lay ahead. They are stressing to local people how to use native plants to do landscaping rather than introducing imported plants that may have a negative impact. Another area of focus is trying to repair the damages that have been done by over harvesting specific wildlife and the imbalance it has caused in the ecological system of the islands.

We saw the mangroves along the shoreline which helps serve as a buffer for the winds and salty air to protect the other plants. NO, I didn't plant any, YES, I had my hat, and NO, there were no monkeys!

Marine iguanas are specific to the Galápagos Islands. They look sort of like a prehistoric dinosaur or a mythical dragon. They come ashore to warm themselves on the rocks.

Some of the landscape ideas using native plants.

A wobbler

At the research center they have a collection of saddle back tortoises that were brought from another island to help with their preservation. There were only 12 females and 2 males left when they began the breeding process a little over 40 years ago. After some failed attempts in hatching the eggs, they finally figured out what they were doing wrong and achIeved success. To help with the genetic pool, they brought a male tortoise from the San Diego zoo. Today there are over 80 tortoises and they are reproducing on their own.

Looks like E T

This is a land iguana being used in the center's research for breeding.

We later went to an area were the tortoises were in a totally natural habitat and not in a captive environment. These are the dome back tortoises.

To give you an idea of their size I broke this stick to about 1 foot in length and stood it up.

We also saw some ducks

Cattle egrets

After lunch we made a brief stop to explore some lava tubes.

This Galápagos barn owl was inside one of the tubes.

That pretty much concluded our visit to the Galápagos Islands. We spent the night on Santa Cruz Island and will head back to Quito tomorrow.

Galápagos - Day Three

Our boat moved to a new island position during the night. We had some fairly rough waters and the ride was up and down and sideways. Thank goodness I slept through most of it. We started the day by cruising around Champion Island in the zodiacs to observe the wildlife that was living in the lava cliffs. There were several different species of birds and of course sea lions.

Swallow Tail Gulls

Brown Noddy

Swallow Tail GULL AND chick

YellowCrown Night Heron

Floriana Mockingbird

Blue-Footed Booby

Brown Noddies

Noddy

After we returned from our cruise it was time to go snorkeling. I joined the group today for awonderful experience looking at all the beautiful fish swimming along the bottom of the ocean. I especially enjoyed watching the sea lions swim around me as they were playing in the water.

The chef gave a cooking lesson on how to ceviche after we finished our snorkeling outing. It is kind of a salsa with fish, shrimp, octopus, lemon juice, tomatoes, peppers, and onions. It was delicious.

We enjoyed a great lunch before taking the zodiacs to Floreana Island to visit the highlands. A jungle bus took us up the dirt and gravel road to a place to see the giant tortoises.

The waves were really big and the ride in was exciting.

There were some large marine iguanas roaming around the dock area.

Hiking to see the Giant tortoises.

A young tortoise was a very rare find as they try to destroy the eggs to keep the tortoises from reproducing.

There was one tortoise in a romantic mood but the other one wasn't interested.

Lulu told the story about the mystery of Floreana Island where several people went missing and some weird couples that came to live on the island back in the 1930's. There are books written about it.