By Joey Kilmer

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the title says it all. Today (Monday) is our last day here on this island. Yesterday the liberal arts group arrived. We knew they would be doing things that we did on our first day, so when they came to a particular lookout, we made sure to be snorkeling in the water down below. Incidentally, it’s the cove on the island where Darwin arrived. Hey, did you know that when Darwin came to the Galapagos (in 1835), he was here for only 5 weeks. He probably didn’t stay on San Cristobal for more than a few days to a week, and he definitely didn’t go snorkeling.

A few days ago I bought an underwater disposable camera. I took some really cool pictures of fish and sea lions. It was a lot of fun, but I can tell I got spoiled by the invention of the digital camera. After like 20 minutes in the water, I looked down at the camera and was surprised to see I had used up 2/3rds of my pictures already.

So I’ve been here for about a week. Here’s what my next week looks like: us ecology kids are going to go on a tour with the liberal arts kids to three other islands: Floreana, Isabela (the biggest) and Santa Cruz. We’ll spend a few days at each and get from one to the other via boat. There will be more snorkeling involved and a bunch of other cool stuff.

Cross-posted on Joey’s personal blog

A crowded beachBy Joey Kilmer

OK, first off: Correction – In my previous post, I said that the sand on one beach was coarse because the islands were relatively new and the material making up the sand was still breaking down to finer sand (or something like that). That’s actually not the case at all. What I should have said was that the beach was young. The island is plenty old enough– at least 5 million years old. A few days ago, we went on a field trip that ended up at the world’s most perfect beach: white, soft sand, clear blue-green water, black rocks poking up in artistic ways along the fringes of the beach… It was beautiful. It was at this beach that I saw my second wild octopus. This one was bigger than the first one, and it was moving around more too. It was crawling around the rock it was on and then it shot off and swam a little ways, changing color do a dark blue, then it landed on a different rock and instantly camouflaged. It was really cool to watch its color changing right before my eyes. A part of me wanted to bother it so I could watch it shoot out an ink cloud, but I decided that probably wasn’t the best idea.

Cross-posted on Joey’s personal blog

This sign is to protect the sharks, not the stupid people who try to mingle with themBy Joey Kilmer

Hey there, so today’s like our 4th day here on the Galapagos Islands (San Cristobal, as I mentioned earlier). Things here are awesome (still!). After the snorkeling adventure I mentioned in my last post, I got severely sunburned. Well, it’s not bad all over, just on my lower back, my knees, my ankles, and kind of on the back of my shoulders. The good news is there are tons of pharmacies around here and I was able to get my hands on a bottle of aloe. I might need to go out and get some more soon, though, seeing as how it’s almost gone. My burns ARE feeling much better now, though. Whew.

Well while we’re here, it’s not ALL fun and games. We have to take classes too. Luckily the classes don’t take up a huge amount of time and we’re pretty free to explore in our free time. In class we’ve been learning some interesting things, like that all of the reptiles here on the islands are endemic, meaning you can only find these species here. A large percentage of all the rest of the organisms on the islands are endemic as well, which is one of the things that makes the Galapagos so special.

Today we had a field trip to the highlands of San Cristobal. The area here down by the beach is pretty dry, there are a lot of cacti. But, up higher, things are wetter and you’ll find a lot of grasslands and “forests” of bushes called miconia. Many of the Galapagos islands are powered by diesel fuel, but as of about 2000, initiatives have been taken to use alternative, renewable energy sources. On a big hill here on San Cristobal, are three huge wind turbines that provide a yearly average of 50-60% of the island’s electricity. On a good, windy day, they can provide 80% or more.

San Cristobal is the only island with a significant amount of fresh water on it: it has one or two volcanic lakes on it that give the town water.

We took three pickup trucks with taxi signs on the tops, and as soon as we got out of the town, a bunch of us moved from the cab into the back and rode back there, standing up. On our way back into town, it was raining a bunch, but some of us were already plenty soaked, so we rode back in the pick-up’s bed anyway. I had mine to myself, and it was really exhilarating, racing through the rain.

After our field trip, I went with a group of friends to a cove that’s a bit north of the town. There, we went snorkeling. We’ve rented snorkeling equipment for the rest of the week, so now we can go out whenever we want. Yesterday we snorkeled in the water in front of the university’s building here (called GAIAS, which stands for Galapagos Academic Institute for the Arts and Science, or something along those lines). There were some big-ish fish that were blue with stripes and had yellow tails. We found a whole big school of them and were swimming with them for a while. There must have been hundreds! Also occasionally a sea lion would come and swim right underneath me. It was crazy! It’s also not uncommon to see rays in the sand near the shore.

By the way, the beaches here have really coarse sand because the islands are relatively recent.

Anyway, like I said, today we went to a cove north of the town and there we went snorkeling again. The land at the water was made up of uneven volcanic rock as opposed to the sand of a beach. There were cool things growing on the rocks. When we first got in, there was a sea lion swimming with us. It was really cool. We snorkeled for a bit, watching all the crazy fish, with their ridiculous colors. There were several rays, including a pretty big black one and also a spotted eagle ray (google image search it). These were the ones we saw the other day that are black and have white leopard spots. The one we saw today wasn’t very big, but still awesome. Wikipedia says they can get up to 8 feet wide and up to 16 feet long including the tail.

I was starting to get cold, so I climbed out of the water to take a break. The thing was that I didn’t feel like finishing for the day, I just needed some motivation to get back in the water. My friend Derek gave me motivation enough when a few minutes later he announced, “Hey guys, I think I just found an octopus.” We didn’t believe him at first, but we got in the water and looked. Sure enough there on one of the rocks near where we were sitting was an octopus. It’s wasn’t very big, maybe as bit as my two hands put together, but it looked really cool. On top, it looked like a rock, and you could only notice it once it started moving. Its underside was a brilliant blue. It was beautiful. It made my day.

So right now I’m sitting in the computer lab at GAIAS. I’m gonna head back to my room, shower, apply more aloe, and then head out to dinner. We’ve been eating dinner at nice little places every night. I’ll take pictures. Dinner usually consists of rice, beans, a little salad, and some kind of meat, either chicken or fish (albacore is common). Desert is usually some kind of fruit or ice cream. Yum!

Take it easy, everyone, and if the snow and the cold is getting to you, I give you permission to pretend to come down here and go snorkeling with me. We’ll pretend to have a lot of fun, I promise. We’ve got enough heat and sun to go around.

Cross-posted at Joey’s personal blog

Going down into one of the natural tunnels caused by gas being trapped under lavaBy Joey Kilmer

Hey there from the Galapagos Islands, San Cristobal to be exact. We flew in here just yesterday afternoon. This place is great!

The most exciting thing is that today we went snorkeling! The first place the boat took us was a relatively shallow area. When we first got in the water, we were excited just to see a fish, but then we started seeing other things as we went further. There was a sea turtle eating an underwater plant, there was an iguana under the water crawling on rocks to eat algae growing on rocks, while yellow-lipped fish tried scaring it out of their territory. There were sea lions that swam around with us a little bit. We were watching a few females and then suddenly a huge male swam within a few feet of me. The females are pretty docile, but you’re supposed to watch out for the males, so even though I didn’t feel threatened at the time, I backed off. We saw several rays half-covered in sand, and several schools of fish, some really little, others at least a foot long that were like blue and yellow and had some stripes. I liked those ones. Nothing in the water seemed particularly afraid of us, and sometimes we’d find some curious fish following us.

Then we got back in the boat and headed to this place called the ¨Sleeping Lion¨, a huge rock jutting out of the water, at least like a hundred meters, maybe more. Super steep sides, dropping almost vertically down into the water. I was the first out of the boat here and had to calm myself as I looked down at the side of the rock disappearing into blackness below me. We swam around this island and saw some more cool things. First of all, on the side of the rock were barnacles, probably some types of coral, and algea, I suppose: There were large parts of it that looked like someone went over with a paint brush, alternating between red and blue paint. There were more cool fish. Someone pointed downward towards the nothingness, and we saw a shark, swimming, turned on it’s side, swimming along the rock wall. This thing must have been at least 10 feet long. We also saw more sea turtles, some had algae growing on their backs. In a huge crack splitting the rock island, we saw several large rays. Some were ¨golden¨while others were black with white leopard spots on them. We saw a few more sharks before going back in the boat. These ones weren’t as big, but still looked really cool!

On the way back from the Sleeping Lion, I lay down on the bow of the boat and ate watermelon and relaxed. It was amazing. One of the coolest days I’ve had in a long time.

Oh, yesterday, I went swimming with a few friends. One thing you should know about this place is that along the water in most places you go, you’ll see sea lions. These guys are everywhere, and they’re really cool animals. Anyway, we were swimming and we see one headed right towards us. We backed away a little, and it came and swam in a circle around my legs. It wasn’t too much more than a foot or so away.

So right now I’m chilling at this internet place that’s on the island where it costs 1.50 for an hour of use. Pretty reasonable, I must say. We’re in a town that has shops and restaurants and stuff. It’s not a very big town, but we’re able to get most things that we’ll need. It’s not like we’re out in the middle of nowhere.

Cross-posted at Joey’s personal blog