Well, here I am in the Galapagos living the island life!
I realize that this doesn't quite fit in with the plans that I laid out the last time that I sent out an e-mail, but things here are very fluid! Everyday life here is a lesson in flexibility.
I finished up my classes at the beginning of April. I ended up taking 11 weeks of classes and “graduated” at intermediate high. I am very thankful that I didn't leave any earlier when my Spanish wasn't as strong, because I still sometimes find myself struggling even at this level!
On the 13th I said goodbye to Quito, and my good friend Jill, and flew out to San Cristobal in the Galapagos. I am working for a foundation called Hacienda Tranquila, though some days I think “Hacienda Dramatica” would be more appropriate!! Life at the farm itself is great, very laid back and easy, but we have a director in town who is more interested in dating the volunteers and being seen with gringas than he is in the foundation's mission. My first week was filled with other people's drama, people bickering, and problems. I managed to stay out of it, and now we don't have to see the director much anymore so the problems have decreased.
San Cristobal is the 5th largest island in the Galapagos, and the only one with fresh water on the island. The island has a Giant Tortoise breeding program (each island and each island's volcano has its own species of G.Tortoise and the San Cristobal one is mostly extinct), it also has TONS of sealions, crabs, whales, sharks, Darwin finches, Blue-footed Boobies, Manta Rays, Frigate Birds, and all kinds of other excitement. It is said that the sealion is the face of the island because there are so many of them. The island also has a sign that says “Welcome to Paradise.” :)
When I first arrived, I stayed at a house owned by the foundation...incredibly beautiful house. Insane views of the harbor, surrounded by trees and no neighbors, less than 2 minutes from the beach. After one night of this I was transferred to the hacienda where I will live for 7 weeks. What a switch. The hacienda house is small, very rustic and basic, with views of....cows. When I first arrived the house was beyond filthy, chickens were running through the kitchen, and the walls were crawling with huge spiders and tiny biting ants. I was slightly horrified.
That first week I gave the house a thorough cleaning...it honestly looks like an entirely different house now. Friends who came over to visit could hardly believe how clean the bathroom was. I felt significantly better after the place became livable!! Also, that Thursday one of the girls quit and I moved into a bigger room and began sharing with the only other girl in the house (instead of with one of the guys).
The farm is huge, loads of acres of land. The land is covered in fruit trees: guyavana, tiny sour plum thingies, oranges, guava, lemon/lime cross, and who knows what else. We get fresh milk from the cows every morning, and if you can find them we get fresh eggs from the chickens. I am truly living the farm life here :) Just last night I was outside handwashing my clothes surrounded by calves (they get tied up at night so that the moms are easy to find in the morning for the milking) thinking about how different my life is now. I knew I was done with my laundry when the bulls started fighting 10 feet behind me. Haha, you can bet I moved back toward the house pretty quickly!!
My job here is to “work with plants.” The hacienda/foundation only just got its start in January, so things are in their beginning stages here. We spend a lot of time clearly plants with machetes so that native trees can be planted (plants provided by the Charles Darwin Foundation). We also started to build a greenhouse for sugarcane this week. Ooo...and we spend a lot of painful time clearing away Mora with machetes. Mora is basically a cross between blackberries and raspberries and has awful terrible thorns that bite you when you try to hack down the plant. You know you've had a successful day when all the volunteers walk away bleeding!
I also help with the epoterapia program...therapy for kids, using horses. Only thing is that there aren't any kids on the island who actually need this therapy, so it is more about the emotional benefits to all the kids. Right now I just help, but starting next week I am taking over the program.
Lots of animals here at the farm. We have a puppy that was gifted to us by they guy who helps us with the plant work (I hate the idea of gifting animals and though I enjoy having a pet here, he is a lot of work and responsibility), chickens (I am watching them preen in the kitchen as I type this...one of the chicks keeps jumping on the mom's back...the cutest one got eaten by something over the weekend-sad), horses, cows, donkeys, roosters, geckos, small tarantulas, and rats and mice. We wake up in the morning to the rooster crowing, cows bellowing, dog barking, and the donkey braying. Seriously, everyday.
Yesterday all of the calves got vitamin injections and medicine for parasites. You should have seen the gringos chasing the calves around trying to get the needle to stay in their flanks! Haha, it was a great time. The Ecuadorians laughed and laughed and laughed at us. After the cows got their medicine, the puppy got a shot as well. He went a little crazy after that and we were afraid that we had poisoned him. He seems ok today, maybe a little sore from the injection though.
I have time to write today because it is one of the volunteer's birthday and most everyone went out to party last night (I was too tired after chopping mora all day in the sun) and partied a little too hard. They are all passed out meaning that there is no work today. I finished a book, did some cleaning and more laundry, took a nap, and basically wasted time. That's life at the hacienda! We also had some rain earlier, which normally halts all work anyway.
The hacienda is about 20 minutes (by taxi) from port (town), so I think that I will only be coming out on the weekends and one day during the week probably because we aren't allowed to leave until 5pm and a taxi one way costs $5. Out here that is a fortune!! I have a bunch of friends in town now, so if the hacienda gets too lonely I may truck in more often (this weekend 2 of the volunteers leave and then there will just be 2 of us here until 1 new person comes Mondayish).
Life in port is incredible. On my first day I saw sealions, a Blue-footed Booby, Pelicans, and a Manta Ray!! I screamed when I saw it because I had lost vocab in any language I was so excited :) You can swim with sea turtles and sealions here, and the sealions truly respond to people. I saw a girl playing with them one day (it is illegal to touch them), she was doing flips in the water and they were copying her. They all played together for awhile, it was amazing. I will stay on the island this weekend and hit the beaches and hang out with the volunteers before they leave for home.
Hopefully next weekend I will get to visit Santa Cruz (they have HUGE Giant Tortoises) and Isla Isabela (they have penguins!!!).
Well, it is time to cook lunch from scratch (look at me growing up so fast!!) and clean the chicken poo out of the kitchen. Haha, my life!!
Love you all and hope that things are going well for you!
I realize that this doesn't quite fit in with the plans that I laid out the last time that I sent out an e-mail, but things here are very fluid! Everyday life here is a lesson in flexibility.
I finished up my classes at the beginning of April. I ended up taking 11 weeks of classes and “graduated” at intermediate high. I am very thankful that I didn't leave any earlier when my Spanish wasn't as strong, because I still sometimes find myself struggling even at this level!
On the 13th I said goodbye to Quito, and my good friend Jill, and flew out to San Cristobal in the Galapagos. I am working for a foundation called Hacienda Tranquila, though some days I think “Hacienda Dramatica” would be more appropriate!! Life at the farm itself is great, very laid back and easy, but we have a director in town who is more interested in dating the volunteers and being seen with gringas than he is in the foundation's mission. My first week was filled with other people's drama, people bickering, and problems. I managed to stay out of it, and now we don't have to see the director much anymore so the problems have decreased.
San Cristobal is the 5th largest island in the Galapagos, and the only one with fresh water on the island. The island has a Giant Tortoise breeding program (each island and each island's volcano has its own species of G.Tortoise and the San Cristobal one is mostly extinct), it also has TONS of sealions, crabs, whales, sharks, Darwin finches, Blue-footed Boobies, Manta Rays, Frigate Birds, and all kinds of other excitement. It is said that the sealion is the face of the island because there are so many of them. The island also has a sign that says “Welcome to Paradise.” :)
When I first arrived, I stayed at a house owned by the foundation...incredibly beautiful house. Insane views of the harbor, surrounded by trees and no neighbors, less than 2 minutes from the beach. After one night of this I was transferred to the hacienda where I will live for 7 weeks. What a switch. The hacienda house is small, very rustic and basic, with views of....cows. When I first arrived the house was beyond filthy, chickens were running through the kitchen, and the walls were crawling with huge spiders and tiny biting ants. I was slightly horrified.
That first week I gave the house a thorough cleaning...it honestly looks like an entirely different house now. Friends who came over to visit could hardly believe how clean the bathroom was. I felt significantly better after the place became livable!! Also, that Thursday one of the girls quit and I moved into a bigger room and began sharing with the only other girl in the house (instead of with one of the guys).
The farm is huge, loads of acres of land. The land is covered in fruit trees: guyavana, tiny sour plum thingies, oranges, guava, lemon/lime cross, and who knows what else. We get fresh milk from the cows every morning, and if you can find them we get fresh eggs from the chickens. I am truly living the farm life here :) Just last night I was outside handwashing my clothes surrounded by calves (they get tied up at night so that the moms are easy to find in the morning for the milking) thinking about how different my life is now. I knew I was done with my laundry when the bulls started fighting 10 feet behind me. Haha, you can bet I moved back toward the house pretty quickly!!
My job here is to “work with plants.” The hacienda/foundation only just got its start in January, so things are in their beginning stages here. We spend a lot of time clearly plants with machetes so that native trees can be planted (plants provided by the Charles Darwin Foundation). We also started to build a greenhouse for sugarcane this week. Ooo...and we spend a lot of painful time clearing away Mora with machetes. Mora is basically a cross between blackberries and raspberries and has awful terrible thorns that bite you when you try to hack down the plant. You know you've had a successful day when all the volunteers walk away bleeding!
I also help with the epoterapia program...therapy for kids, using horses. Only thing is that there aren't any kids on the island who actually need this therapy, so it is more about the emotional benefits to all the kids. Right now I just help, but starting next week I am taking over the program.
Lots of animals here at the farm. We have a puppy that was gifted to us by they guy who helps us with the plant work (I hate the idea of gifting animals and though I enjoy having a pet here, he is a lot of work and responsibility), chickens (I am watching them preen in the kitchen as I type this...one of the chicks keeps jumping on the mom's back...the cutest one got eaten by something over the weekend-sad), horses, cows, donkeys, roosters, geckos, small tarantulas, and rats and mice. We wake up in the morning to the rooster crowing, cows bellowing, dog barking, and the donkey braying. Seriously, everyday.
Yesterday all of the calves got vitamin injections and medicine for parasites. You should have seen the gringos chasing the calves around trying to get the needle to stay in their flanks! Haha, it was a great time. The Ecuadorians laughed and laughed and laughed at us. After the cows got their medicine, the puppy got a shot as well. He went a little crazy after that and we were afraid that we had poisoned him. He seems ok today, maybe a little sore from the injection though.
I have time to write today because it is one of the volunteer's birthday and most everyone went out to party last night (I was too tired after chopping mora all day in the sun) and partied a little too hard. They are all passed out meaning that there is no work today. I finished a book, did some cleaning and more laundry, took a nap, and basically wasted time. That's life at the hacienda! We also had some rain earlier, which normally halts all work anyway.
The hacienda is about 20 minutes (by taxi) from port (town), so I think that I will only be coming out on the weekends and one day during the week probably because we aren't allowed to leave until 5pm and a taxi one way costs $5. Out here that is a fortune!! I have a bunch of friends in town now, so if the hacienda gets too lonely I may truck in more often (this weekend 2 of the volunteers leave and then there will just be 2 of us here until 1 new person comes Mondayish).
Life in port is incredible. On my first day I saw sealions, a Blue-footed Booby, Pelicans, and a Manta Ray!! I screamed when I saw it because I had lost vocab in any language I was so excited :) You can swim with sea turtles and sealions here, and the sealions truly respond to people. I saw a girl playing with them one day (it is illegal to touch them), she was doing flips in the water and they were copying her. They all played together for awhile, it was amazing. I will stay on the island this weekend and hit the beaches and hang out with the volunteers before they leave for home.
Hopefully next weekend I will get to visit Santa Cruz (they have HUGE Giant Tortoises) and Isla Isabela (they have penguins!!!).
Well, it is time to cook lunch from scratch (look at me growing up so fast!!) and clean the chicken poo out of the kitchen. Haha, my life!!
Love you all and hope that things are going well for you!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment