All the students have left to return to Amurica minus a handful of us from UNC who are staying to do research in Ecuador and Galapagos for an extra 6 weeks. So since I'm working on a Tortuga project, I've got 5 weeks in Galapagos and 1 final week back in Quito where I plan on traveling to as many places possible... this also translates to tacking back on the "smart traveler" secret fanny pack under my shirt to hold the most valuable things, because yea that shit happens. Now about this sea turtle project, I'm like the cream in the middle of an Oreo cookie. On one side of me I have a professor who believes that mammals (including sea turtles) have feelings and maybe even theology, and her approach to research is taking a passive "let's not harm the sea turtles" strategy of snorkeling and taking pics of the carapace and both sides of the turtle's face. The other cookie is a young PhD candidate who has turtles fleeing when they hear his name, applying a more hard scientific approach with tagging, extracting scutes (scales) off the turtle, and taking blood samples. As their disagreeing views on science suggest, the 2 scholars are not amigos. The professor has asked me to do an independent project on my own and the other has asked me to come in 6 days a week for 8 hours a day to work w/o pay, w/o scholarly recognition, and w/ only 3 hours of academic credit. Since communication is obviously minimal b/w the 2 and neither of them are here on the island I've been hokying around the past couple of days. The candidate asked me to meet with him on Monday (this past Monday) to begin working (after asking me 6 times when I could start and what my schedule was for the next 5 weeks). However on Sunday I received an email from him saying that he and the project team were going to Darwin and Wolf for the week and I would start the following Monday. Normally this could be one of those things you can just shrug off, but this is different because it's Darwin and Wolf (and also the tone in his email was like a taunting child who has something desirable but isn't going to share). Darwin and Wolf are the 2 islands way up in the north of the archipelago (upper left corner of the figure below) surrounded by the richest marine life: sharks, whales, turtles, fish, rays, EVERYWHERE! I think the best way to sum it up is like this: the reputation Galapagos has to the rest of the world as unique, isolated, and dream destination is how Darwin and Wolf are to the rest of the Galapagos.
Only 3 boats have permission to visit these islands, which I may add are very expensive boats. Hence the opportunity to go here is like winning the lottery and the message saying this guy and the team are going this week but I'm not invited is worse than going a school year w/o surf and watching perfect warm water rights come in but can't go out. He's def not scoring brownie points on this gal with that move, and it's his PhD that he wants help with, not mine. Yea, ok, so in the meantime just snorkeling with sea turtles and reading anything I can get my hands on in the university library (mind you it's just a couple of shelves w/ mainly discarded textbooks students didn't want to drag back to the states) which happens to be a good amount of cheesy-romance-tragedy shore stories.
Took a small break from writing this to go to a spot called Tijeretas to snorkel for tortugas. Didn't find any sea turtles but did do flips and spins in the water playing with a sea lion pup as he was following me around on my search. Needless to say I got a little sidetracked, but it's impossible to resist the innocent cuteness of a sea puppy. This afternoon: more reading, eating the leftover croissant w/ cheese & guayaba marmalade from my plate from breakfast that I couldn't fit in my stomach but successfully stowed away from my mom while she wasn't looking, I've got dimes, nickels, and pennies saved up to buy an ice cream, and maybe another swim. Sometime this week I'm going over to a local friend's house for dinner w/ his fam; hopfully I'll have one of my better Spanish moments then.
ps. limited to uploading only the shortest of my videos so this will have to do
Shenanigans
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