Midday at the Oasis

We spent a day at Huacachua. It´s a small oasis in the desert near Ica. It´s how you imagain a story book oasis, a small lake surrounded by date palms, surrounded by giant sand dunes.

People come here to sand board on the dunes. For some reason Gav thought he was snow boarding and insisted on wearing his hat and coat. It was good fun but the sand gets eveywhere, Gav´s ears are still full of sand even after 2 showers.

The bottom pic is of me at lunch at our hotel with a mean parrot that wanted to share my salad.

"Deepest darkest Peru"

We arrived in Guayaquil, Ecquador´s largest city, after the Galapagos and just like Quito we weren´t that impressed. We stayed in a neighbourhood where all the shops were behind bars and whatever you bought was pushed through the gaps. We´d heard some dodgy stories (having bags stolen, muggings or having to pay money to phoney border guards) about the border crossing from Ecquador to Peru so booked our bus trip with a reputable company that would take us straight through to Lima. The 24hr bus trip was fine and fairly comfortable with some incredible sand dunes through the desert. We also had DVDs, big reclining seats and lunch, dinner and breakfast. At the Peruvian border as we got off to go through passport control blokes were offering to fill in forms on your behalf and then told people it was 10 US dollars to have your passport stamped or it was 10 dollars per month depending on which scam artists was "helping" you. We knew it was a trick so just ignored our guy but I think one English guy paid and he was furious and wanted to go and beat the con artist up.

We´ve had a few days in Lima now and have found Paddington but his marmalade sandwiches weren´t under his hat! So far we´ve felt safer here and Lima´s been friendlier than Quito. The pic of Bec is of one Lima´s best known restaurants - La Nautica Rosa - where we had a delicious meal on Sunday and could watch the surfers as well. We didn´t have another go, the waves weren´t as impressive as Bali(!) Was also able to watch my first UTD match live since the opening day of the season, so we had a good day all round on Sunday.

Swimming amongst turtles´ heads!

When people tell you that you´ll absolutely love a book, film or place and praise it to high heaven then more often than not the expectation outweighs the actual experience and you end up disappointed, so when Matt D (friend from NAS) started using "best" this and "-est" that about the Galapagos Islands, I hoped this was not the case ´cos he´s a cool, laidback guy and doesn´t exaggerate. Happily the islands surpassed all my hopes and while Bec might describe it as "one of the highlights" I´ll state that it´s the best place I´ve ever visited it and I continually sat in awe of how close I was to the amazing wildlife and was astounded by my surroundings. I felt like I used to at the end of holidays when I did when I was a kid when we left, ´cos if we ever do go back (and I doubt it), then I can´t see that there will still be sand on the "main" road on Isabella island.

As Si said in his comments, each island is totally different. Anyone can visit, Tracy, even reprebates like me, but 97% of the islands are national park and you have to have an official guide with you - ours one day was an ex footballer who had played for Ecquador. Isabella island has 5 volcanoes and one of them, Negara, has the 2nd largest crater in the world but the other (in Tanzania) isn´t active. Pic 10 shows the crater about 25km in diameter and its last eruption was 2005, we saw a giant tortoise with scorch marks!!

The tour company was excellent, and we had a fantastic time. When we were on our own though 2 days after everyone had left we went to a beach that we had to ourselves. I was looking out to sea when I saw something pop its head above water, then another and another. They were turtles about 5 metres from the shore, so we watched for about 10 mins and then put our snorkel gear on and swam with them for another 20 mins, they were still there when we left much later. After the snorkelling while Bec was reading I kept saying "There´s one and another. There´s loads." The commentary wasn´t exactly David Attenborough but Bec humoured me with a few "Yes, darling I know."s I was transfixed for nearly an hour repeating myself over and over just watching them swim around.

I´ve put another pic of a blue footed boobie on as its the slickest bird there is. It just stands there looking cool and the females swoon after him, when it dives for fish it folds its wings away and darts like an arrow straight down into the ocean. I could have watched these and the pelicans, diving and swirling around forever.

Pic 1 - turtles
2 - Blue footed boobie, or Amar as we started to call them
3 - Negara´s volcanic landscape
4 - Frigate bird bay on San Christobal
5 - Bec at 4
6 - Baby seals, only days old, on Isla Lobos
7 - A yawning tortoise
8 - Land iguana
9 - Just off Santa Fe. There´s a sea lion resting on the rocks too.
10 - Negara´s crater
11 - Isabella is so perfect alchohol grows on trees(!)
12 - Sea lions are everywhere. Sometimes you have to avoid them walking down the streets. This guy was sunbathing next to 2 blokes then got up to check out 2 French girls.
13 - Pelican
14 - Tortuga bay on Santa Cruz island and some of the others from our tour party
15 - Tortuga bay again.

The Galapagos Islands

When we got to Quito we decided that it would be stupid to come all the way to Ecuador and not visit the Galapogos Islands, as we're not likely to ever come here again. It was a good decision, it's been one of the highlights of the trip.

The big attraction here is the wildlife, there are a lot of endemic spieces unique to the Islands. It's where Charles Darwin got he's inspiration for the theory of evolution. Because man hasn't been on the islands for long and there are very few predators, the animals and birds are aren't scared of us, so they let you get really close, but they aren't tame. You see them all in the wild as all the islands are one big national park.

Some of the highlights have been seeing the giant tortoises, one of them, Lonesome George is the last of his speices. They live to be 250 years old.

The Blue footed boobies are brilliant, the males just stand there in there bright blue shoes looking cool and wait for the ladies to come to them. They've spawned a whole boobie inuendo T shirt business.

The Sea Lions are on every beach. You have to watch where you stand or else you'll stand on one. They wake us up in the mornings barking. We've swam with them a couple of times, they're so cumbersome on land but in the water the're really playfull and elegant. They scared me to death the first time one swam up to me, but the secone time I was just in awe. We've took some underwater pics so hopefully they'll come out and we can put them on the blog too. This picture's of some babies.

There are tons of marine iguanas too, looking like dinasaurs. They look scarey but I think they're harmless.

We loved it so much here're we changed our flights and stayed 3 more days. We fly back to the mainland on Thursday, we'll post more pics then as the internet connection here is really bad.

Guess What?

So we´re back in the city after the wonders of the cloud forests. Here are some pics of the creatures we saw at Los Cedros.

Unfortunately we didn´t see any monkeys, but maybe that´s a good thing after my experience in Cambodia(!) We did hear all 3 species (howlers, capuchins and the brown headed spider monkeys) but they are elusive little buggers. We did see some stunning wildlife though; snakes, birds and butterflies all the colours of the rainbow, insects as big birds and listening to the birdsong each morning was a beautiful way to wake up, even Bec was in a good mood despite the 5:30am natural alarm calls. By this week I could identify toucans by the calls, we loved the night bird that sounded like a dripping tap with a whistle at the end and the frog that asked "hoo, r yoo?" most of the night.

Despite the remoteness (it´s mentioned just a few times in these 3 posts) we had all the creature comforts we needed, even though everything can only be brought up by hand or on mules.

The pics are of a toucan, sleeping Mancunian, a transparent butterfly, a 5ft constrictor that Bec nearly trod on, and a suspected tarantula. Turns out it wasn´t despite the body being as big as the palm of my hand.

(Un)fortunately we didn´t come across any pumas or bears either, maybe it´s ´cos I never wore my scruffy red riding hood outfit. When Bec encountered the snake I´d already walked past it totally oblivious and then she shouted me back. Both the snake and her were scared stiff and neither would move a muscle for about 5 mins until I convinced Bec to calmly walk towards me.

So, when we did the treks looking for the monkeys Bec and I always did them together. One day, we went out with Sarah the other volunteer and Ray the guy who is co-ordinating the research at the reserve and all 4 of us were to do a "transect" each. Transects are treks that go straight through the forest rather than meandering the so called easier paths. The 4 of us were to start at the same time and then meet at the bottom of the first transect. Easy.

Guess what? If I told you that one of us got completely lost on only a 200 metre stretch, I´m sure you´d all think it was me. Well, unbelievably it wasn´t and I did my tarzan impression and when Bec (who´d had the shortest route) didn´t appear after 40 mins I went off and found her wandering in almost the opposite direction. Macho pride was restored after the Hong Kong psychometric test!

Bamboo for goalposts

The scenery around and in the reserve is stunning and even after walking, scrambling, falling, sweating and squelching (I sweated so much in my wellies that after an hour or so the sweat from my feet made them squelch and probably scared off any monkeys that we might have seen) for up to 5 hours a day we were still in awe of the cloud forest. The best footwear, by the way, are wellies, because of the mud, streams, rocks, foliage and snakes underfoot these are like all terrain vehicles (but not driven in and around Gatley - Ste and Neil!)

In order to look for the monkeys and so that the data for Sussex Uni is accurate, there are certain routes you take. Sometimes we walked for nearly 2 hours from the research station just to reach the start of a trail.

The bottom pic is of the football pitch at Magdalena Alto, (the nearest village) which can´t be reached by road either, on our way back yesterday. I realsied after a few days just how remote we were when when one of the books in the kitchen was called "Donde no hay medico" which translates as "Where there´s no doctor."

And they call this work

Well we're back in Quito after two and a half amazing weeks at Los Cedros in the Cloud forest. Remote is not the word. We had a 4 hour bus journey, half of which was on unpaved roads then when we got to the "town" we had breakfast and started out on the 4 hour up hill hike to the reserve. Luckily there were mules on hand to take our bags up and they caught us up at about the half way point, so we rode them for the second half. Gav was petrified, he didn´t want to get on the mule, either because it was a puny little specimen that didn´t look up to the job of hauling him up a mountain or because he´s a city boy who´s scared of animals, the only thing he´s ridden before was a donkey on Blackpool beach back in the seventies. Sadly Gav had the camera so there´s no picture of him on a mule.

The reserve is very remote, the only way to get up there is by mule, so all our supplies got muled up. All the water comes from a stream and they use the stream to generate electricity too. There was no mains sewerage so we were using compost toilets - nice.

Our job was to walk the trails for 4 hours a day looking for monkeys. It sounds perfect but it was rock hard, all the trails are on the side of the mountain we were exhausted by lunch time every day. You can see how steep it was from the pic of me climbing. There were a couple of waterfalls with pools that you could cool off in which were lovely . We never found any monkeys. It was great as there was only one other volunteer, so we pretty much had the whole forest to ourselves. Here's a couple of pics of us at the end of one of the uphill trails and Gav recharging in the pool afterwards.

We also did odd jobs around the reserve, Gav loved the morning we spent in the green house, he's missing his garden a bit.