Transition - Pete's 10th blog post from Galápagos

23/11/2008 (end of week 16).

Welcome to my 10th blog post from the Galápagos Islands. I apologise (again) for the length of time between recent posts.

Did you know that Marine Iguanas shrink during times of hardship? To find out by how much, please read on… :)

A week in Quito
Alright, so in my last blog you may remember I had a decision to make regarding staying on in Galápagos for another 6 months working as a consultant at the Charles Darwin Research Station?

Well, I’m still there. The contract was signed at the very last minute (20 minutes past 5 on my last Friday) and instead of flying out to mainland Ecuador (and some travel before heading home to NZ) on Monday the 3rd of November as had been originally planned, I flew out to Quito on the Sunday for a week while the paperwork required for me to work on Galápagos was sorted out. The fact I needed to leave for the mainland wasn’t known until the day before I signed.

A week in Quito provided me a great opportunity to take some Spanish lessons and I had managed to provisionally organise these on Friday during the day and confirmation was my last task of an eventful day. I’m very glad my guide book recommended the great school I ended up at – Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World) Spanish School.

Quito, which is at 2,850m and only 20km from the Equator, is Ecuador’s capital and situated in a 70km narrow corridor within the Andes mountains, surrounded by high peaks and snowcapped mountains. Because of its proximity to the Equator, the climate is similar to springtime in England. On arrival, I was picked up at the airport by my Spanish teacher, Sylvia, and her daughter Paola. They took me straight to my host family, Magdalena & Eduardo, and I got a quick tour of the area courtesy of Lara, another Spanish student staying with them who would leave the next day. I was reminded of what other people had told me regarding safety in Quito during our walk through the neighbourhood and found the quickest way to get to the school - only 15 minutes away from my temporary home.

The following 8 days of 5 hour a day Spanish lessons (combined with sightseeing) were great. Sylvia was an exceptional teacher and I got a lot out of the whole experience. I would highly recommend combining a homestay with lessons if you ever learn another language, especially if it also involves getting the chance to have a look around – a chance to get to see some of the sights within a learning context.

Old Quito is definitely the more interesting part of the city, with its narrow cobbled streets housing churches, parks, museums and other colonial buildings, but also turned out to be the riskiest to travel in - as I found out after having my camera stolen while on a crowded Trolebus heading back from an afternoon of having a look around there. I thought the inside zipped pocket of my jacket would be a safe haven for my camera, but I have to admit I admire the skill of the pickpocket that managed to take the camera within the 10 minutes of the bus ride that was the most crowded. People jostling for space masked the effort and the moment I got off the bus I felt the camera’s absence.

Thankfully, Sylvia leant me her camera for further excursions while I firstly scoped the local black market shops for my camera, before finally committing to buying a replacement camera just before I left back for Galápagos. The presidential palace was revisited to get some replacement photos and further trips included a night time visit of Old Quito, which is beautifully lit at night, an evening concert of traditional music and dance from the Otavalo area, a visit to the important traditional market town of Saquisili near to the snowcapped Cotopaxi volcano, and a trip out to the Equator (Mitad del Mundo) where I balanced an egg on top of the head of a nail (I have a certificate to prove it).

Transition
Back in Galápagos I spent some time finishing off some of the outstanding tasks from the time I was a volunteer and needed time to prepare for the start of the work contract. The basic premise for the new work will be creating a conceptual plan for the integration of the scientific databases held at the station and to come up with some initial software solutions in aid of this. I will also continue to keep working on some of the ongoing tasks I started as a volunteer.

Anna, a new volunteer from Italy, will be helping with some of the more technical aspects and has already started on specific requirements for the collections databases. The next few weeks especially will be very busy as I 'interrogate' those people in the know before they head off on their holidays.

I have found myself an apartment in town after 3 months staying at the station and although the use of a clean kitchen and having my own space is great, I do miss waking up to the sound of the ocean. Instead I wake up to the whimpering of the landlord’s dog and the occasional cries of the baby next door. It may just be temporary - other places will become available as volunteers leave leading up to Christmas. Now that the reality of my not going back to New Zealand to see my partner and her 3 year old has set in, the place also feels a little empty.

I hadn’t anticipated spending Christmas in Puerto Ayora, but I will be away surveying sea turtles for 10 days up until the 24th of December, so I guess that’s where I’ll be. I’ll hopefully get a chance to slip away on a short cruise before then to visit some of the outer islands including Española, where the Waved Albatross will be until the end of December.

This weekend the plan is to go to Bartolome Island, but this trip has fallen through before. Fingers crossed it goes through.

Please keep coming back to see further updates – they will occur!

Till the next installment …

Pete

Oh yeah, Marine Iguanas apparently shrink by up to 20% during lean times!

A difficult decision - Pete's 9th blog post from Galá...

26/10/2008 (end of week 12).

Welcome to my 9^th blog post from the Galápagos Islands. I now have only one week left as a volunteer here at the Charles Darwin Research Station.

A work opportunity

First of all, I apologise for the length of time that has passed since my last blog entry. I had a few weekends of ill health at the beginning of the month, didn't get out much and wasn’t really inspired to write only about work. I have also had a difficult decision to make regarding a work opportunity that would keep me away from my partner back in New Zealand an extra 5 months beyond what we had initially prepared for. After much deliberation, not helped by the poor local channels of communication, I think we are both ready for whatever decision is made.

The position, first sounded at the end of August, has now almost been approved locally and an offer should be on the table very soon. Regardless of what happens, I head back to New Zealand for the Christmas and New Year period in mid-December.

Recent work has revolved around the fishing sites database I have been working on for a while now. The sites need to tie in with all the spatially available fisheries data at the best scale available, i.e. where exact coordinates aren’t available for a monitoring event the next best ‘resolution’ are the central (base) coordinates for the fishing site or, failing mention of a fishing site, the island the monitoring event occurred at (the lowest ‘resolution’).

Day trips and intrigue

I am going out on a few last trips in case the contract doesn’t go through here and one of my recent trips was out to Floreana Island. You may remember me mentioning the book, ‘The Galapagos Affair’ by John Treherne, which is set on Floreana and relates the murderous(?) events that occurred there.

Without giving away too much of the story, 3 groups of settlers, mostly from Germany, arrived on Floreana Island during the 1930’s to start new lives. First to arrive were the Nietzschean philosopher Friedrich Ritter and his devoted mistress/follower Dore Strauch.

Before they left Germany they somehow arranged for their respective spouses to get together to keep up appearances and avoid embarrassment back in Germany.

They adapted well to the harsh volcanic environment and created a vast garden and built a house in the midst of a largely arid landscape next to a spring - one of the few water sources available on the island. Their exploits were well documented back in Germany and soon curious visitors and would be settlers arrived. Most left quickly, as life was too difficult for them, but another determined family, the Wittmers, arrived and stayed. In fact Margret Wittmer arrived pregnant and with her husband Heinz and his 12 year old son Harry, settled in caves once inhabited by pirates close to a fresh-water spring.

The Ritter/Dore camp didn’t particularly get on well with the new down-to-earth arrivals and Friedrich considered his own philosophical ramblings above their level of understanding. Though they generally kept to themselves, they would, however, become allies for the most part in having to deal with some of the events that were to occur after the arrival of the Austrian ‘Baroness’, who arrived a few months after the Wittmers and initially stayed at abandoned Norwegian buildings at Post Office Bay.

The Baroness had arrived with her two German lovers and an Ecuadorian contracted to help the group build a luxury hotel they planned to call the ‘Hacienda Paradiso’. Soon after their arrival, trouble started brewing as there were accusations of thefts and mail tampering. The thefts were mostly of gifts that were left behind for a particular group of settlers by passing boats. Most of these gifts and the mail were left at Post Office Bay (hence the name) and generally the Baroness was implicated when things went missing as she was the one who usually promised to pass on these gifts and also had access to the mail.

Feelings of resentment were starting to grow amongst the various groups, but differences were briefly put aside as the first native to Floreana, Rolf Wittmer, was born. Later, a sequence of events transpired that haven’t been properly explained to this day. It involves a spurned lover turned slave and the mysterious disappearance of his former lover and her ‘new’ partner, a death from poisoning, and the eventual discovery of mummified bodies on a remote Galápagos Island. You’ll have to read the book (or do some research on the internet) to find out the

rest…

Apparently, Rolf Wittmer and his sister Floreanita (along with their respective families) still live in the islands. Margret Wittmer continued to live on Floreana until she passed away in 2000 at the age of 96 and wrote a book about her experiences called ‘Floreana: A Woman’s Pilgrimage to the Galapagos’, which I have yet to read.

I was very interested in seeing what Floreana was like based on the descriptions in the book, especially in trying to determine where each of the respective ‘camps’ were located. The day tour I took started off badly when it looked like we might have to turn the boat around after engine trouble, but it turned out a new oil filter was all that was required. The advantage of this was that we moved off again relatively slowly and saw some Waved Albatrosses up reasonably close. Once on Floreana the first part of the trip involved taking a bus inland to the highlands. In hindsight I could have borrowed the GPS unit used by the crew on our tour boat to pinpoint the location of some the sites from the book and perhaps put them onto a map.

We explored the area around where the Wittmers had lived for 20+ years, namely the pirate caves, ruins of their various homes, and the nearby springs (see the photo of me in one of the caves). I also got a rough idea of where Ritter/Dore and the Baroness had their homes. After lunch, we motored around to Devil’s Crown and Enderby Island for some great snorkeling and awesome bird viewing (photos of birds above are of Nascar Boobies on the left and a Galápagos Penguin on the right).

Back on Santa Cruz I finally saw a Blue-footed Booby up close - something I had been hoping for since I

arrived. I have also been on another dive

trip to Gordon Rocks, where the visibility wasn’t great and I didn’t see as much as I had hoped for. This weekend the plan is to go to Bartolome Island and I may try and squeeze in one more dive trip before then – all in case I do leave next Monday.

I guess you’ll know in the next installment whether I ended up staying or not!

Till then…

Pete

September in pictures - Pete's 8th blog post from Galápagos

Here is the month of September in pictures.

Tortuga Beach - week 5 photos (see blog post 5):

Tortuga Beach - close encounter

Tortuga Beach - Large Marine Iguana

Isabela Island - week 6 photos (see blog post 6):

Isabela Island - Blue-footed Boobies

Isabela Island - Probably a Moorhen; possibly a fully grown juvenile

Isabela Island - Our transport up Volcán Sierra Negra

Isabela Island - On the way to Volcán Chico

Isabela Island - close encounter

More photos of wildlife at the Charles Darwin Research Station:

CDRS - Probably a Large Ground Finch

CDRS - Lava Lizard

CDRS - Tortoises from different islands (note the shape of the shells)

CDRS - Land Iguana

CDRS - Marine Iguanas in the morning sun 1

CDRS - Marine Iguanas in the morning sun 2

CDRS - Male Frigate Bird

CDRS - Female Frigate Bird

La Playa/The Beach - Pete's 7th blog post from the Galápagos

21/09/2008 (end of week 7).

Welcome to my 7th blog post from the Galápagos Islands; a brief one after the substantial Isabela blog. Here are a few more photos from the Isabela Island trip. Left is the beach next to Puerto Villamil on Isabela Island. On the right; close encounter of the sea lion kind on the boardwalk leading to Concha Perla Lagoon (see also 6th blog post).

A relatively quiet week on the work front; the sites database continues to grow, but the other databases requiring cleaning/creating are proving difficult to assess for a number of reasons, mainly due to availability of relevant up-to-date data. I synced all the GIS data from my laptop to a newly available PC from the old GIS office. I now have another option if issues arise and of course, another copy of the data. I'll be putting up a post dedicated to my daily work routine at the station and reflecting on my time here so far in the near future.

A number of volunteers working for various organizations got together midweek for a pizza & card playing evening starting at a local restaurant, and eventually shifting to a local bar with a table suitable for card playing (yeah, I was skeptical at the excuse too). We also arranged to meet up for an overnight camping trip on Saturday to Playa de Garrapatero with a number of local acquaintances.

Playa de Garrapatero (Garrapatero Beach)
On Saturday, we met at 11am outside a camping store to rent tents. It was my job to help in haggling, something I did plenty of in my travels through Asia. The quoted price was $45 for three tents, but we managed to get them for $25; a reasonable result (I was trying for $15!). There were three Xaviers on the trip, which did lead to a number of ‘which one?’ moments. We loaded up taxi Xavier’s car and most of us headed off to on the 40 minute drive to the beach. The rest would make their way over later.

Xavier dropped us off and would return later. After a hot, fully laden 20 minute walk from the carpark, we arrived at the beach – a very welcome sight. A National Park ranger explained the rules which another Xavier translated where necessary. We then headed off to find a good spot to put up the tents. Only a few day trippers were about and as we were the only ones camping. We chose a breezy spot near the beach and away from the resident mosquitos. Tents pitched and it was time to relax. There were 2 Greater flamingoes (resident, sometimes considered an endemic subspecies) at the far end of a nearby lagoon and I saw a Great Blue Heron (resident, endemic subspecies) up close, as well as (see 5th blog post for photos) Black-necked Stilts, White-cheeked Pintails, whimbrels and (I think) Sanderlings . Two more colleagues joined us in the meantime and towards dinnertime Xavier returned with the 3rd Xavier.

It was time to place soccer to decide who would cook. First to 3 goals would resign the losing team to cooking duties. We started off badly and were 2 nil down in as many minutes; it was time to step up our game. Summoning long lost pace and skills reminiscent of more youthful days - I scored 2 goals (I suffered for it afterwards). The scores were tied and the next goal would decide our fate. The other team kicked off and advanced towards our goal. They created an opening and just before striker/3rd Xavier could shoot, one of the girls put in a timely tackle and the ball ended up at another/our Xavier’s feet. He put himself into position to shoot, and unleashed the most devastatingly… feeble shot at their goal. The ball lamely rolled towards goalkeeper/taxi Xavier who nonchalantly went to pick it up… and promptly fumbled it, letting the ball go through his legs and destining his team to cooking duties!

Dinner was all the nicer for having somebody else cook it and we had great evening chatting while sitting around the BBQ. Later, I went for a walk on the beach and watched dozens of hermit crabs making their way along the beach in the torchlight.


The next day we slowly got up and had a relaxing morning, although it looked like every bug at the beach had bitten one of the girls, who had been sleeping next to their tent entrance and would later require an injection to help with the swelling in her hand. I finished my book ‘The Galapagos Affair’ by John Treherne, which covers the murderous(?) events that occurred on Floreana. We left at midday and after lunch in Puerto Ayora, headed our respective ways.

More next week…

Pete