Last Class, Mas Veggies, Life is Good!

As I’m sure everyone knows, last week was the presidential election. Remembering my first presidential election, I had an appreciation for the excitement and nervousness my fellow classmates held throughout the evening. Being in the Galapagos with limited internet and the inability to change anything about the election even if I had wanted to, I enjoyed a nice relaxing evening sin internet.

Last week my new (and last) class in the Galapagos has begun. It’s bittersweet: I get an extra two and a half weeks at the end of the class to relax, but I’ll only have 2 ½ weeks left on the archipelago. There’s a part of me that’s willing to be irresponsible and “miss” my flight, and every subsequent one after that, until Immigration drags my butt onto the plane. Yeah.

Last Friday the class took an excursion into the Highlands. We took taxis to el Junco. This was to be a special trip because the taxis all had….bikes!! We were going to bike back into town and stop along the way to check out plants. Very exciting. Well, yes, very exciting because many of the bikes had some sort of issue, for example, mine barely had any brakes. So here we are, speeding down hills (we’re coming down form the ‘highlands’, so of course we’re going basically all downhill) along a gravel-filled road and our professor, Hugo, is braking very quickly to point out all these cool plants to us. This is great and all, except that his constant and quick braking is causing the rest of us to practically run into trucks, the hills on the side of the road, wipeout, or run into each other. This ended up being more exciting after the plants after awhile. I mean, come on, who doesn’t want to play bumper bikes on a gravel road while speeding downhill? It didn’t take me long to figure out why the head of the program didn’t want Hugo to take his students on a bike ride from el Junco to town; there have been too many student visits to the hospital.  

Building of the windmills

This Tuesday my class took another ride up to the Highlands. Our first stop was the electric company in the Progresso. There we got a short segment of information about the windmill power that the island uses to offset the use of diesel to make electricity. In 2005 Ecuador built three turbines near el Junco. These windmills each produce 8 kWh, creating 35% of the electricity used on San Cristobal. These windmills have saved 1 million gallons of diesel that would have been used to produced electricity, and have prevented 10,000 tons of CO2 emissions. Driving up further into the highlands, I couldn’t see 30ft in front of my face the mist was so thick and the garua sprinkled upon us somewhat like a light mist. Our initial plan was to go for a nice long hike through the muddy highlands, yet we spent a significant amount of this time on the bus waiting for the owner of the property to arrive. When he finally did (yay!!), we drove to an area that still allowed us to reach our destination and return within a decent amount of time. The path we walked along was lined with Miconia. Miconia, an endemic species on the Galapagos archipelago, provides a great example of competitive dominance, where the dominant species monopolies resources to reduce species diversity via exclusion of shared resources. After returning from the walk we went to see the windmills that we had previously learned about at the electric company. The windmills are these massive structures with powerful turbines. These impressive structures were made in Spain, and it cost the European Nation $10 million to supply the three windmills to Ecuador. Although San Cristobal is cutting back on diesel use through the use of power generated by the windmills, diesel will always be in high demand on the archipelago due to the increase of boat usage between the islands.

After a short break (and vacation, hehe), I’ve finally gotten back into my running and exercising routine. I kind of have to because Wonder Women will be here in 4 weeks and I have to be able to keep up with her. Another fun endurance building routine I’ve discovered is…..wait for it….wait for it…..Latino Zumba! Hahaha, oh yeah. This is the greatest class ever, because not only is it a zumba class, but it’s taught by two Latino men, one of which has the ability to make you drool during the dance moves. So here we are, usually 2 gringas and one Asian (sorry to single you out Jackie), shaking, dropping, and popping it to some pretty awesome reggaeton. And on an equatorial island? Pretty much my idea of paradise. Here we are, the white American girls among all of these much older Latina women, trying to keep up with the guy on the stage, while the music’s blaring and pumping. Oh my. One of the guys, pretty sure he’s a dancer, has a tendency to make things up as goes, leaving us trying to keep up, not only the moves but this guy’s energy. I just don’t think my body has the ability to move that quickly from side to side, and I try to make it do it every Tuesday and Thursday for one hour at 7pm.

I’ve discovered the Mercado, a fresh fruit market. Heaven? I think so. All the produce is fresh from the Highlands, which is pretty awesome because I know where it comes from, but potentially dangerous due to bacteria and what not. Lately I’ve been eating spinach salads with avocado, beets (my favorite!), cucumber, and fresh mango with a little lime juice. I also buy lots of apples (from Chile) and carrots (home grown). Mom, I need you to not read this part and skip to the next paragraph. So I’m at the Mercado, I buy a bunch of fruits and veggies that would probably cost me $20 in NY (I got it for $8!), and how do I wash a carrot before I eat it? I rub it off on my pants. That’s right. I will also add here that I have not been sick since I cleansed my GI system with anti-parasitics and antibiotics (although I do believe that a new round of anti-parasitics is in store; it’s a part of life here).

My final for whatever my plant class is called is now over; it had these awesome questions that allowed me to take my creativity to a whole new level, although it involved a large amount of writing. One of the questions was similar to "COme up with an idea to eradicate the Galapagos archipelago of all introduced species. It can be f...king anything (kill all the people, burn everything, ect.). Just have a good argument. Yet another reason why I love Ecuador. Ama la Vida!

Muelle at Santa Cruz

I just arrived to Santa Cruz and will be here through next saturday. The boat ride was uneventful; the fact that I was passed out probably had something to do with that. I'm pretty sure I'm getting used to being on boats b/c I rarely get the sea sickness anymore. But then I also drug myself heavily, so who really knows.