Las Galapagos! The Galapagos Islands

This past semester I took a class called Ecology and Conservation of the Galapagos Islands. It was a really interesting course, and at the end, the class took a trip to the islands. It wasn't actually the whole class, but 9 gringas and 1 ecuadorian boy. We had a great time, despite me catching some throat infection, spending the first two days in the hostel bed, going to the hospital in Santa Cruz island, and getting some strong medication. The doctor I had was my saint of the Galapagos! So, after feeling good again, here is what I did there.

Chalres Darwin traveled to the islands when he was 22, stayed 5 weeks, and visited 5 islands. About 20 years later he wrote "The Origin of Species" the describe his theory of evolution, which holds true today. There are 4 populated islands, Santa Cruz, Isabela, Santiago and San Cristobal. We stayed mostly in Santa Cruz, which is the most developed, tourism having been prominent there for abotu 30 years. There are paved streets, a ton of restaurants and t-shirt shops, and a lot of tourists. A lot of english speaking people, which was kind of weird after being in Ecuador for months. Today there are a lot of cruise ships that make trips to islands and scuba dive or snorkel; there were some young student tourists like ourselves, but a fair number of older, retired folk.

We saw a ton of animals, who don't really scare when you walk by. This is something that makes Galapagos unique; and the fact that you have polar animals like sea lions hanging around marine iguanas, coming from a tropical climate and geckos and cacti, things you see in the desert. The sea lions like the swim around and then sun bathe the rest of the day. Watching marine iguanas swim is so cool, as they use only their tail to swim, their human like arms and legs at their sides. The pre-historic looking giant tortise, some who live to be 150 only have 1 defense, to breath loudly if they get nervous. One could sit for hours just watching these animals.

As part of the class, we were required to make a project, theme of our choice. I chose to investigate about the fisherman of Galapagos, as many men choose this as their occupation. The thing is that there are a lot of different organizations like the National Park of Galapagos or the Charles Darwin foundation that fight primarily for conservation of the species of Galapagos, including fish species and sea cucumber and lobster. These two things were overfished before the Marine Reserve was established and now only allows a certain number of boats, fishing in certain seasons only and small scale fishing, not industrial. Because of this, many fisherman think these foundations and conservationists are again them, as they believe they are doing what they can to make a living. Illegal fishing still happens, and I met a fisherman who used to do this. He said that now he is older, his ideas have changed and he realized that the laws that have been established are in the long term, good for the islands and the fisherman as well. So, an interesting subject, controversial, and not yet solved.

The trip to the islands was amazing, kind of like being in a desert in the middle of the ocean.