Our visit to The Galapagos

We enjoyed an amazing 5 day island-hopping trip to the Galapagos Islands with our kids and my Mom.  Here are some of the highlights.  (More photos are here.  If you click on one photo to open it, the photos will all appear at the top of the page, you can then click on "slideshow" at the left of the page and the photos will begin to scroll through the file.)

The Galapagos is a must see for many students of science, myself and my mom included.  To walk where the theory of evolution was first considered was amazing.  Can I say that I noticed how each of the finches’ beaks were different?  Not at all, however I trust Darwin that it’s true.  We did notice that the land tortoises had different shaped shells and different sizes of necks to help them survive in varied environments.  We also learned about how habitat destruction and hunting the tortoises has already lead to the extinction of 3 of the 14 species of land tortoises on the Galapagos. 

Jeffrey as a land tortoise 

Jean and Linda with volcano crater behind us

We did a lot of hiking; most notable was our hike to a volcano, Sierra Negra.  It was a 10 mile “out –and-back and we had spectacular views of the caldera.  We walked on lava rock from an eruption in 2005, felt the heat from the volcano vents, and saw many lava tunnels.  We even walked through one!

Walking on lava, crater is where lava came from

Inside a lava tunnel

Small lava tunnel 

Shark

 Snorkeling was another highlight; we don’t have any photos as we didn’t use an underwater camera.  Here are a couple of photos of sharks and sea turtles from above.

Sea turtle, we saw a lot of these while snorkeling.

More animals...

adult marine iguana

baby marine iguanas

blue-footed booby

After returning from The Galapagos, we spent some time in Quito and visited the Mitad del Mundo, or Equator.  It was very cheesy and we participated in all the cheesy activities including balancing an egg on a nail, taking photos, and other activities that are not supported by any science.  Also, the equator isn’t really there!  It’s located a few miles away in an indigenous archeological site.   It was fun, regardless and Mark finally got to eat cuy; which is know to us as guinea pig.

Mark and his cuy

The supposed equator

Our Christmas tree in Ecuador

Goosey and Jenna on one of our many boat trips

Our last dinner in the Galapagos

Mark and I say goodbye to our family

When Mark and I returned to Cuenca we celebrated El Ano Viejo with friends in the Ecuadorian fashion.  We had dinner and then went out to burn our manegote.  It is an effigy that is created by each family.  Below is an example of a very high end effigy (not ours).  You can also see the fires burning on the street as all the families burned their manegotes.

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday!  We missed seeing many of you this holiday season and have realized it's fun to live in a different country for a few months, but we couldn't do it long term!