Sun dried and fried

This weekend started off with a run to the market Saturday morning bright and early at 8am. We ended up getting the usual and then some. We also treated ourselves to a fresh coconut and managed to get a whole tree of bananas for four bucks. It probably has about 50-60 bananas, although not ripe yet we hung it outside on our back porch. Afterwards we went to fix our bikes again because 4/5 of them have flats…not cool but it’s a way of life around here. Then we were all off to our work party which was held at the marine lab. They have the best view to work with…and a ping pong table. We had plenty of food, beer, and a good time that I was beat by 7. Regardless I wanted to chat with Rach so I headed into town to hit up an internet café : ) Then Joe and I just walked around town to the pier where we saw what we think was a shark, a sea lion bobbing around, and a massive ray. The town’s main pier has fluorescent blue and green lights that allow you to see into the water at night. There are all sorts of things swimming around at night. Pretty exhausted, I was in bed by 10pm.

The plan on Sunday was to head to a place called Los Gemelos which are huge volcanic craters up in the highlands by the town of Santa Rosa. We were going to ride bikes but conveniently one lost air overnight…again bikes here are highly un-reliant. The cab right instead was interesting because we didn’t end up where we wanted to go but instead he took us to a tortoise farm…which we had no ambition of seeing. After a while of trying to talk to him he brought us to a lava tunnel. For some reason we had the notion that Los Gemelos was nearby and that we would walk to it from the tunnel then walk back to Puerto Ayora. He insisted he’d wait which turned out to be great because it was nowhere near where we wanted to get to. But this lava tunnel was HUGE. Ceilings ranging from 25ft tall to small enough you had to squeeze through on your belly. It was very old with visible collapses that blocked the path. It was also electrically lighted but who knows the source. After walking about ¾ of a mile we came to another opening that was the end and our driver was peering in haha good thing he waited…He then took us to up Los Gemelos and we parted ways with all the ambition to hike back to Puerto Ayora. Los Gemelos although a rather short hike was to a crater about 100x100 meters large with a depth well over 50 m deep. That was the first, and the other was a combination of two equal sized craters that had been joined in the middle at one point. Maybe as the roof collapsed thousands of years ago, it caused a chain reaction for the second to simultaneously go down as well. Joe, Rob, Josh, Joel, and myself were only there for a solid hour and started to hike back towards Puerto Ayora.

Literally this is where our day got interesting. What we thought was a reasonable hike started to become one of the most grueling walks ever...We were in the highlands past the town of Santa Rosa on the westward side of the island headed towards Bellevista, another small town that meets up with the only highway spanning the island from Baltra to Puerto Ayora. So we started this hike jazzed and kidding about not going the entire way with the whole “dude, we got this” attitude. On the way we passed over 200 dead birds with the majority yellow warblers. The taxi’s drive too fast and either smoke the birds out of the air or hit them drinking out of the divots in the road which is another reason locals have large issues with the taxi service. However, were hiking this endless road that is extremely swervy, and hilly none the less. We have plenty of water still pumped, laughing about aimless things. Then we all shut up for about an hour, in the zone as we get baked in the sun. Every corner we’re like yeah it’s totally around the next one only to continue walking corner after corner after corner. As we’ve been walking for over 2 hours now were going crazy right, thinking we made a wrong turn, hungry, all of our feet are blistered. We go on and I just crack up laughing to myself…”to be honest this is acccctually a pretty entertaining time” and we continue walking. We finally make it to Bellavista at 2:30 which means we’ve been walking the highway for over 3 hours. Grabbed some much needed grub like there was a white beam shining down on the restaurant. It would have been another 2 hours to walk from Bellavista to Puerto Ayora and our feet/bodies couldn’t handle it and snagged a $2 cab instead. Our day consisted of 1 hour crater hikes and a majority enjoying the highland landscape by foot from the highway. Brutal, yet a great work out..?! Interested, I looked up on Google Earth how far it actually was when I got back...9.5 miles from Los Gemelos to Bellavista.

snack time?!

As I lay out on our porch watching cruise lines bob up and down I slam water like it’s going out of style and pass out to the ocean crashing the shore. dreaming of   : )

Sunset

Off our porch. have a good night : )

Keep it loose, Keep it tight

Well today's Friday already and we're finishing up organizing and naming the files that we chose were of significance. I was going through some digital elevation models that they have and came across one that was super detailed of percent slope so I schnazzied it up and it looks really neat up close. Next week is looking like we'll be creating our geodatabase in physical form and learning hopefully the freeware called Post-GIS then putting in a bunch of GPS tracked marine data.

"I really liked your film on the oceans"

Yesterday the man himself, David Attenborough, showed up at the station to do a behind the scenes portion of his up coming film. For those who don't know he's like the bee's knee's for biologists, the god like British voice for shows like Life, and in real life he's 86 still livin' it up. The station being what it is plays an important role in producting information that government and the National Park can then use to create rules to promote sustainability as well as an economically productive province. Through their film which we now know is going to be in 3D they want to put a background story together that helps illustrate the connectivness of each organization as well as views towards those organizations. So David was here doing a meet and greet with us which was pretty interesting he talked for quite a while, shook hands, took pictures, that sort of thing. The whole time they were filming, and I happened to be in the front so he straight up goes "What do YOU do here?" flustered I put together something. Doubtful it'll make the cut but it's pretty cool seeing what will be in the film and where they've been filming.

woke up to a gecko in our coffee pot

I biked to the fish market after work yesterday and in under 15 min was back home making fresh off the boat. LOVE IT. We fried it again but this time we took an eggplant, sliced it up and mixed it with onion and garlic. Then soaked those in egg and mixed in bread crumbs. We on the spot created fried eggplant fries, and oh man they were tasty.

Afterwards we headed to town because we solved the surfboard incident by just ordering a new fin for cheap to the United States that Deb can bring back when she comes. I had the chance to skype Rach which I didn't think would happen so that was great : ) The group then got together to play a mad game of bananagrams at our bungaloo.

Soccer has turned into a weekly event so we'll be playing again right after work over in the National Park. They weren't to happy with us using their electricity for lights so we can't play after dark. bummer but w/e. Tomorrow there's a work grill out by the marine building.  It was only 10 dollars but from what I hear their getting alot because 30 some people signed up.There's going to be alot of people, alot of food, and alot of cervezas. Thats at noon so we'll have the rest of the day to soak up some rays.

Today it's rained all morning, the first time its legitamently rained since we've gotten here. Makes it a little cooler, enough that we don't sweat just sitting around.

Coffee breaks over...back to the grind.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

The last couple days at work have been grueling because we're literally only organizing files on the computer. But thats what it'll take to move on so we get jazzed on coffee and push on. Slowly we got done organizing it and now we're on to something even better...naming all of them. Coded names in order to shorten but at the same time give meaning to the files.
This is all part of a tedious process that we learned about in advanced GIS called creating a geodatabase. Although it felt like a quick process when we hurriedly wrote it on our exam it is actually a process and a half to do in real life...We already went over what they are looking for or their aim for this geodatabase and the information they want within it. But the 80gb of information they want to include is like I stated earlier extremely unorganized...We are in the phase of siphoning out what to keep such as the Galapagos province as a whole shapefile and what to not keep....random points without any attribute information attached to them.

Bahia Sullivan: Isle Bartolome

But at the moment I'm going through all these ocean charts that are interesting. They are close ups of sea depth along with a lot of the smaller islands in the Archipelago. I'm slowly learning the names of most of the islands, the locations, and towns they might have on them.

Recently we have gotten screwed by the person we rented surfboards from...We let a Canadian family try them out for a half hour and their son had snapped off a fin...He gave us 25 dollars in order to fix it but we assured him it would be more because we signed a contract. The man, in front of family, also agreed to meet us at the fish market to come with and return them in case it was more. Unfortunately he wasn't trustworthy and didn't meet us and we are now stuck paying the other $75 dollars that their charging us...not cool man your retired, loaded, and lied in front of your kids.

This is a really spacey message but it's been a few days.

I also started my day after the incident with a trip to the laundry place which is the only way to do laundry. It's a dollar a kilo so it ended up being $5.50 for my stuff. After that I went to a bakery to get some fresh bread. They also randomly had bread crumbs which we could use for our fish later. Because after the bakery I hit up the fish market that sells fresh yellow fin tuna off the boats for $2/lb. I then headed to work at 8 to an awesome email : ) I've been able to get the Internet quite consistently which is SUPER nice and have figured out that I can get to town on a bike in sometimes 5 min depending on what I'm going for or 20 walking.

Giant camera, Giant Centipede

As I sit here working BBC is standing next to me doing an interview with the English guys office next to mine...Steve something who tracks tortoises with GPS's to try and determine their migration routes. They've been here for about a week now filming random things like a giant centipede last week, to land lizards today, to interviews of important people, to color changing moss. All of this is part of a new segment their filming which none of us know when it is to air but it highlights the Galapagos in detail...The word on David Attenbourgh (sp?) is that he's coming shortly and supposedly there's going to be a meet and greet here at the station for people who work here...we'll see if that actually happens.

I'm getting shushed because we're making to much noise so now I'm taking our first routinely scheduled coffee break...

While I wait for BBC to get done with their interview...I'm looking up road trip ideas around the Great Lakes or other places. I don't start school until the 4th I believe so Rach and I were thinking. rooad trrip. If you have any suggestions drop a line.

Recent Recipe:

Joe and I ended up soaking our fresh tuna in egg, dabbing it in crumbs, then frying it on our stove. Cut up a red pepper, minced garlic, and an onion, sauteed it with a lime and then mixed the left over egg to put on top of rice. It ended up being a great meal, but had quite the food coma afterwards.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield...

Long day

6/3/2012

Lets just say...surfing is a work in progress...

Lovin' it

Almost the weekend

6/1/2012

Today started off pretty slow because the data that were organizing needs to be on both our computers now that the server is down. Transferring 80gb of random stuff on slow computers took our entire morning...So I chowed on candy and finished reading Bill Bryson's, The History of Everything. Joe works in the office right above mine so as lunch rolled around we both look at each other in dire need to relieve some energy. Off to the beach for some lunch break snorkeling. However it was high tide, which here means silty/murky water and maybe 15 feet deeper than normal...Didn't see much but it was a great mini work out before going back to work.

Then as we were getting back to it, Joel came running in and said we are now official....our uniforms were ready. So we bolted over to the office to rock our new work tees. Ended up being able to get a fair amount of things done in the after noon. Although I was constantly refreshing my email to stay entertained :)

After work we had a futbol match set up with Chema, people who work at the station, and some other guys that work at the National Park. Not expecting to much we ended up playing on this picture perfect South American street ball field complete with mini goals and a tortoise painted in the middle. A great game of 4v4 grew into an awesome match of 7v7. As it got dark they even had lights...Oddly enough it was tucked away as their employee parking lot for the Galapagos National Park.

Funny picture of the day goes to...This tourist
laying next to a highly unconcerned and
uninterested marine iguana.

We ended up playing for 2 hours so by then I biked into town and chatted it up with Rachel for a bit was was super nice. Quick took a shower back at the bungalo and wandered off to town to find Joe and Rob who were wandering as aimlessly as I was. We grabbed some beer and ended up watching the Argentina Ecuador match over by the dinner street. Not realizing what time it was we stayed up the latest since we've got here...midnight...haha don't judge, sweating all day takes the wind out of you.