Hey guys -- Andrea's too feverish to type up a blogpost before we head off to Tabuga, so I'll just copy and paste the email I just sent my friends-and-fam list. Don't worry, I'm taking good care of her...
Hola -- que tal amigitos? Soy kicking ass and taking names as per my usual! You find me now back in Quito, for a short while, before embarking on a overnight 6-hour bus ride to Andreitas village of Tabuga. The ride promises to suck, a lot, but from everything I've been hearing about Tabuga for the past year and a half it'll be worth it. Unfortunately I happen to know a lil something about sucky travel today, as we grouped up at 5:30am to take a 4 hour boatride back to the island that has an airport. I actually wasn't hungover, but due to taxi difficulties to the pier, we were the last ones on the boat and got stuck up at the front where it's choppiest. We're not talking a big boat here, far from it, there were about 12 passengers and believe me when I say I got to see 8 of the 12 puke heartily in front of me for the next 4 hours. I was allright for the first half hour or so, but the boat got really hot and stuffy up front, so I'm starting to sweat as well as have my stomach turn from everybody puking in bags, so I was about to pop but we got 'em to open up a flap on the back to let some air in, I moved back there and made it through without chunks blown. You think that's bad though -- at least I'm healthy! Andrea came down with a fever and all sorts of bad things last night and spent all night dealing with that, and she's been like a zombie all day today on all of our travel back to Quito. I'm just glad I've been here to force feed her bread and water and dehydration pills and whatnot, but she's checking up with the Peace Corps nurses right now to see if she caught Dengue Fever, which would probably screw up the rest of our trip... She's been a trooper tho, so hopefully not.
Good news from our day of travel (from 5:30am to now I've been on taxi, boat, watertaxi, truck, ferry, bus, plane, and taxi) -- we called American Airlines and they found my bag, so the donated clothing will go where it is needed, so that's a weight off my back. Tight.
To catch ya up on yesterday -- we rolled out dece early again on a tour in the back of a pickup truck to a couple different spots down a road on Isla Isabella. First up was the 'Wall of Tears', which was completely idiotic. Back in the fourties after WWII, some Ecuadorian politico got the bright idea to send a ishload of prisoners out to the Galapagos for no apparent reason. There were a bunch of prisoners, and not many police, so the police guards responded by inventing a task sure to kill a bunch of them -- by building their own prison lavarock by lavarock. Dumb. Anyways, they only got one wall done before the prisoners revolted, tied the guards to trees, took their weapons and shanghied a ship off of the island, but not before a whole bunch of them died. So, saw that. That was that. Second up was a pretty sweet lava tunnel that we were able to climb down into, that went all the way to the ocean (although we didn't wade that far). Thirdly, and really the one I'd been waiting for all along, was a visit to the Galapagos Turtle Breeding Center, where they collected all the different types of turtles (each island evolved its own subspecies) and breed them, take care of them until they are old enough to survive all the sweet predators we've introduced to the islands, and then put them back in the wild. Turtles are tight! And big! And slow! And completely unnecessary! I mean seriously -- what's the purpose there?
Lastly we jumped on a boat and headed out to a nice snorkling spot not far away from our hostel. On a little pre-snorkle walk we found a bunch of black lizards, literally hundreds on sitting on the rocks next to the path. Then we checked out a shark resting area (weird -- how do they know to come there to rest?) which was dope, and then out to snorkle. Not as much life there as Hawaii, but still very good snorkling, and I found and followed two sea turtles (and got Andrea over to see the second one) so that's always tight
Got back, had another great fish dinner, this time up was swordfish, deeeelish. Headed out to a bar for some more drinks and dancing, which is right around the time Andrea figured out she had a bad fever and felt generally like warmed over sheeeeit, so we called it an early one to allow her to thrash around the hostel for the next 10 hours or so. I feel really bad for her, but she's doing a lot better now and has got some antibiotics, so hopefully we're good from here on out.
Shit! I gotta wrap this up so that I can get some pics of the sunset over Quito. We're headed off to Tabuga tonight as I said, so hopefully I'll be able to hitchhike to one of the bigger towns nearby Tabuga to send one last missive before I fly back to Denver. Adios muchachos!!
AJ
(with Andreita looking on)
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