Making Coffee, Swimming with Penguins, and Coming Home!

Saturday we took an open bus through the occasional drizzle into the highlands to visit a coffee farm. We met the owners of the plantation, who moved to the Galapagos in the 60s, learned how coffee was produced the the traditional way, and saw how it's made now. This plantation produces about four tons of beans a year - if memory serves, about a quarter of the total Galapagos output. It is grown in the shade of tall trees, sometimes bananas, and is produced without pesticides.

Here you see us standing in front of the largest tree on Santa Cruz, which happens to grow on this coffee farm. It provides some serious shade! They say it has to be at least 100 years old. Now, if this tree grew at home it would surely be hundreds and hundreds of years old, so this shows the effect of the fertile volcanic soil and the tropical climate - such a huge tree can grow in "only" a hundred years.

 Green coffee beans on low coffee shrubs. They turn red when ripe and are called "cherries."

 Roasting coffee the old fashioned way...

Sunday, our final full day in the islands, we boarded a bus at dawn, drove to the port at the north end of Santa Cruz, and took a boat to the island of Bartolome. As one of the youngest islands it is more rugged and looks dramatically volcanic. We climbed to its highest point, then cruised to the beach in the shadow of the iconic pinnacle and snorkeled with tropical fish, Galapagos penguins and a marine iguana. Utterly fantastic, and for many, the favorite experience of all on the islands.

We'll see you tonight!

We´re on our way home

So, we´re finally on the way back home. Right now we´re at the Hotel Macaw in Guayaquil, where we´ll spend the night. It feels weird to have left Galapagos, but I (and I´m sure most everyone else) is glad to be on the way home.

El Presidente!

You know how you clean up the house when company's coming? Puerto Ayora does this too. Students (and lots and lots of municipal workers, who have been painting curbs and washing off the dirt for the last few days) swept the streets and repainted curbs white and yellow for about an hour this morning, in preparation for the arrival of the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa.

At about 9:45, Correa would ride a bicycle into town (it's a long gentle downhill ride), flanked by lots of local bike riders who are pushing the municipal government to add more bike lanes to the city streets. He seems to have quite a passionate following - sound trucks were blaring announcements and songs extolling him, and people lined the streets. But there were protesters too. And everyone had to wait while his convoy made its way from the airport to the north, all the way across the island. So, as we've learned, patience is a virtue. We all waited...

Bicyclists and supporters eventually filled the main street on the outskirts of Puerto Ayora, waiting for El Presidente, and then, in a matter of a minute or two, there he was!  Look closely and you can see our group on the far side of the street. Correa is the guy in white on the bike...

Despite the two soldiers in the photo, security was surprisingly light - our group was almost within touching distance. All the more surprising considering that last fall there was a national police strike because of changes to the constitution and the army had to rescue him from the police. And we think our politics are hardball! We followed the group downtown, waited a while for something to happen...

...which it didn't, so we went for lunch.

Final note: As I was writing this, a new guest came into the hotel and we started chatting about wireless access. It turns out she and her boyfriend had been booked into another, nicer, hotel but had to leave because they needed the rooms for the president! She was not entirely happy with the hospitality!

Later....

Making the Daycare Center Sparkle

Today we repainted the stained and fading walls of a municipal day care center that caters to low income residents of Puerto Ayora. The president of Ecuador will be visiting tomorrow and they want it to look its best. After a late start because the paint didn't show up on time, we worked hard to cover a lot of wall space with fresh white paint. And Frances had a wonderful time playing with the niños while we painted.

Mañana...

The Grotto

After the recycling yard and lunch, we took a water taxi across Puerto Ayora harbor and hiked across rolling volcanic terrain to "Las Grietas."  This beautiful grotto-like gorge, filled with cold, clear blue green water framed by towering black lava cliffs, took our breaths away! Absolutely spectacular!

Las Grietas is Spanish for "the crack". The name does not do it justice. We swam and floated to the end of the first section, clambered carefully over the jagged lava boulders to the next section, and snorkeled through a deep pool filled with fish grazing on algae coating underwater rocks. The water is salty, but not directly connected to the sea. It was bracingly chilly on a hot day, and exhilarating. While the group, less two of us, was playing in the far grotto, a few more visitors arrived; two were heading home to the Netherlands after traveling the world for nine months, and a second couple, from Ireland, announced he was a "jumper" and planned to dive off the cliff to the water 50 feet below. Say what? Oh, yes, she says, it's quite a famous spot for jumping. So he scouted it, pondered his fate, we held our breath, and he jumped! Soon to be followed by some fellow thrill seekers from Israel...

Our students watched and cheered from the water (Yes, parents, they were well out of the way, and no, despite pleas, we did not, of course, let anybody in our group follow their example!)

On the way back, wending our way along the twisting trails through the brackish water lowlands, we came across marine iguanas basking in the hot afternoon sun.

And back in town, on the fish market pier, we found sunbathing sea lions, which resemble big puppy dogs with flippers. And teeth... If you get too close they will bark and snap at you. They also really stink!

But they are really cute, in a big, barky, stinky way!

We paint a day care center Thursday. Friday, the president of Ecuador is coming to town and is scheduled to visit this preschool.

Tourists at the Recycling Yard

We take a break today from clearing the jungle and planting bushes for a day of sightseeing. First stop? The municipal recycling yard! Bet the folks on the tour boats don't see this. (Though we saw their recyclables - they say the tour boats send trash and recyclables ashore.) The city government is quite proud of its recycling efforts. They say 80% of the population recycles glass, cans, plastic, compost and cardboard. There's a visitor center, with a large sign listing sponsors, corporate and otherwise, and interpretive signs throughout this facility. It's much like the operations you'll see in Chapel Hill and other American cities, though smaller. We had a guide from the city offices - he spoke only Spanish, so Kiernan interpreted. (He's been invaluable in helping bridge the language barrier!) Tours seem mostly focused on promoting recycling to island residents.

Islanders also pay a dollar deposit for large bottles of Coke or other soft drinks - even plastic bottles, which are refilled and recapped.

This afternoon... off to Finch Bay for nature watching and snorkeling.

Clearing the Jungle

Our service took us to the highlands again this week, clearing brush between what eventually will be buildings at the treatment center. Some areas look like a long fallow farm field back home. Others look like, well, tropical jungles, filled with palm trees, towering banana plants and other thick brush. Bring on the machetes!

Yes, these manly men cleared that little patch of dirt. Okay, it actually had a huge chunk of half buried concrete that took a lot of effort to dig out and break apart. I resisted the urge to wager that it was an impossible task. Sure enough, it wasn't. And at the end of the long, hot day, it's break time...

 Rosie makes a new friend... Hola, amigo!

Puerto Ayora Farm Market

Every Saturday farmers from the highlands gather for a farmers' market in Puerto Ayora. Actually, part farmers' market, part flea market, part garage sale. As Dan noted, you might even pick up a pirated DVD of the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film. (Is that ironic? A pirated pirate movie?) We pass some of the farms on the way to our highland construction site. You'll find pork and other meat, fresh fish, bananas and other produce. There are interesting and different fruits from what we're accustomed to, but not a wide variety of vegetables.

(I made these photos a bit bigger so you can see more detail. Knock on wood, or on coaxial cable perhaps, they seem to have uploaded successfully. Onward and upward!)

mañana...

Online photo album

Here's a link to a web album posted by Emily Pozo, the director of Galapagos ICE, the organization that set up our service project...

http://tinyurl.com/Galapagos-cfs

Notice a few of Kiernan being interviewed by the local TV station. We've apparently made the news twice!

Mañana...

Hey, Mr.Talleyman, talley me banana...

Snacks grow on trees here! You chop the tree down to get the bunch of bananas. New trees sprout at the base - the guy who whacked it with the machete says it takes about six months to grow tall enough to produce a bunch...

Andrew says it's surprisingly heavy. The bananas should be ripe and ready to eat by the end of our time here...