Sunday: Lava tubes and wild tortoises

We saw tortoises in the wild for the first time today, after a bus ride into the rain forest in the Santa Cruz highlands. The forest looks a lot like a North Carolina woods in many ways, with taller trees above, and low shrubs and brush undergrowth beneath, though the plants are completely different. Frances says the look and feel is very different from a rain forest in Costa Rica.

The Galapagos are volcanic, made of layer after layer of cinder, ash and lava. In some cases the flowing lava continues to gurgle through an underground "river" as the lava hardens around it. The flowing lava will sometimes continue to move after the source dries up, leaving an empty "lava tube" or long, snaking underground cavern. Here we are descending into an opening, where the cavern collapsed thousands of years ago.

We descended 40 or 50 feet down to the floor of the tube. The sides are smooth, and the tube is about 20 feet wide and at places more than 30 feet high.

Then it was back to the visitors center, where the idea was not just to study the tortoise, but to BE the tortoise...

Tomorrow we go back to work. We may be painting a house in town, rather than working on the treatment center up the mountain. Last week the crucial Bobcat, which moves the lava gravel and soil around, blew a tire. It could take a few days to repair it, so we've been put to work on another job.

Jim

P.S. Last night we ate at a restaurant in town. Some of us had tuna, seared on the outside and very rare on the inside, which was probably fresh off the boat at the dock and fish market that morning. Wow! Fantastic!