Galapagos Islands

Galapagos Islands
Sunday August 2, 2009

Here it came again. Today is the last day of our journey on San Cristobal Island. Our destinations of the day included visiting endemic tortoises, going to the beach, and hiking up to a local volcano called Junco. Seeing the tortoises was another reason I joined the study abroad trip aside from searching the blue-footed boobies dancing. It was definitely incredible to see how small these tortoises were when they were only 5 years old, and to see how giant they grew when they reached 100+ years old. I saw at least ten of the big ones during their lunch time. On the way out, one of the older tortoises was on the pedestrian trail, I could not help myself from getting close to it for a memorable photo.

Although we could not ride on them, like many wished to, taking a photo next to them was still unimaginable for a person who never thought she could visit the Galapagos Islands.

We moved on to a nearby beach for a little break to enjoy the nice sea breeze and gentle waves. There were many surfers at this beach, and the water was not as cold as I thought it would be; It was so calm. The only thing that was missing from the site was the numerous sea lions. I only spotted one at this beach. It was probably the fact that there were a lot of people for such a small beach. We had lunch at a nearby parking lot before we continued on traveling to Junco Volcano.

It was incredibly misty at such a high elevation. The scenery at Junco was full of endemic green and red ferns. It was so misty that it felt like it was drizzling. I was surprised I did not slip when we hiked up on the mud to get to the top. When we reached the top, we barely saw the Crater Lake due to high humidity. The guide, however, insisted that if we were to come up here in summer time, we would be able to overlook the whole island from where we were standing. I could only imagine the beauty of his words. This was pretty much the last day on the Galapagos. We strolled through the beach walkway once again at that evening before we departed back to Quito the next morning.

Participant, Eastern Illinois University, Environment, Society, and Culture of Ecuador Study Abroad, Summer 2009