Once we got into town, most of the day was spent mooching around the Mockingbird and Casa Blanca (bar with outdoor seating) and souvenir-shopping. Back at the hotel, one of the television channels was having “La Hora Inglesa”, which consisted of 2-year-old Dr Who, with Spanish subtitles- a good way to learn a bit more Spanish. Then dinner and bars ( Read more... )

Today was “Diez de Agosto”, Ecuadorian independence day, so instead of a hike on the reserve, we went into town to watch the parade. This was definitely more like a military procession than a carnival, with ranks of school children in immaculately smart uniforms, majorettes, scouts, and then the army, navy, more and more navy, marines, police and ( Read more... )

This morning I asked to go back to the nursery, and was given three helpers too, so then I reasonably well considering I hadn’t known anything about Galapagos plants three weeks earlier. Carried on in the afternoon too ( Read more... )

Back to the nursery this morning, starting to sort out the Scalesias from the other things in the beds there. It looked like this had not been done for a while- lots of bags with just alien weeds- mainly the wood-sorrels (Oxalis, pink and yellow), nettles (an Urtica, but not U. dioica) and an occasional mora plant. This was slow work, as there were ( Read more... )

This morning we were replanting the area we had cleared the day before. I was sent to fetch the trees from the nursery, having got to grips with what was a Scalesia and what was a something else (mainly a Solanum)- I decided to make a poster demonstrating this before I left ( Read more... )

Another morning clearing mora- I found a patch of massive mora plants, looping over the top of 8ft cat’s claw trees and rooted at both ends- so I macheted the brambles with glee ( Read more... )

Woken at seven by music playing in the hotel, not impressed. Then went to ask about transport back to Baltra as I only had 1 ½ weeks left, then onto the Mockingbird for a leisurely brunch and internet ( Read more... )

Most of the morning was spent queuing at the bank, then called home and went to the Mockingbird (internet café) and a group of us went to La Tijeretas / Frigatebird Hill. There were only a couple of actual Frigatebirds at this time of year, and they were all females and juveniles, but it was worth the walk for the view from the top: one way, across ( Read more... )

Today’s hike was up to the miconia forest. It seemed heavy-going at first, with the leader setting a punishing pace, but soon I got to the front of the group and found it actually easier to strike out ahead (then wait for others to catch up) than to keep plodding along behind people with slightly shorter stride lengths than mine. As we climbed, the ( Read more... )

This morning, one group (a big group who came together) went up to the part of he reserve where petrels are nesting: apparently they walk from their nests down to the water at night and back in the morning, but cannot find their way through the mora, so that has to be cleared ( Read more... )