chris´ chicken house
trecking in full get up... aint no mozzies getting me today
sharpening my machete... not for the taranchalas, but for the mora (an introduced plant species taking over the island)
cultivating native plants
carol and emy
planting native saplings
playing with the tortugas... these are the dudes we´re saving!
Sunday 23rd November. We flew to the Galapagos Islands to start our volunteer project with the Jatun Sacha foundation. Our living arrangements are basic but beautiful! We’re in an old house made from bamboo and tree trunks, we have a large balcony with a dozen hammocks. We work 6-7 hrs a day; mornings are usually spent machete-ing surrounding paddocks to clear introduced species – it’s pretty full on, my hands are covered in blisters, but its very rewarding to feel physically exhausted as opposed to mentally exhausted at the end of each day. In the afternoons we either collect seeds, plant seeds in the nursery or pot the saplings we’ve grown in the land we’ve cleared. We’re clearing introduced flora and replacing it with native and endemic flora – especially those that the local tortoise and finch communities feed on. The living areas are surrounded by fruit trees, so when on kitchen duty we also collect papaya, bananas, watermelons, tomatoes, oranges passion fruit and lemons.
We also have personal projects that we spend 1-2 days a week working on. Chris , Mateo and Monica are building a chicken coup so that we cal catch the wild chickens and collect their eggs. Some of us also collect coffee beans and dry them out to sell as income for the station. It’s a long and tedious process, but it’s interesting to see where coffee really comes from! Unfortunately though, the introduced speciens of fire ants live in the coffee trees… and man they hurt! I’ve been attacked 3 times already: you feel a bite, and then a hot rash spreads ~20cm around the bite. It feels like your skin is on fire, and takes ~15-20mins to subside. Not fun.
The staff here only speak Spanish, so it pushes us to learn. We can generally understand what people are saying, and we can usually get our message across, but we still have a lot to learn. There are currently 20 volunteers at the station, but it varies constantly. They’re all fun and we’ll be sad to say goodbye to them!
On Wednesday 26th Nov all of the volunteers spent the morning transporting saplings to a tortoise habitat. We met the Galapagos tortoises… so cute! They look a little like ET.
We all spent the afternoon at a nearby beach, and swam with wild sea turtles. The beach was also covered in Sea Lions (small like seals, but they are not seals, the Sea Lions have fur), and a Blue Footed Boobie! (they also have red and black footed boobies).
We also have personal projects that we spend 1-2 days a week working on. Chris , Mateo and Monica are building a chicken coup so that we cal catch the wild chickens and collect their eggs. Some of us also collect coffee beans and dry them out to sell as income for the station. It’s a long and tedious process, but it’s interesting to see where coffee really comes from! Unfortunately though, the introduced speciens of fire ants live in the coffee trees… and man they hurt! I’ve been attacked 3 times already: you feel a bite, and then a hot rash spreads ~20cm around the bite. It feels like your skin is on fire, and takes ~15-20mins to subside. Not fun.
The staff here only speak Spanish, so it pushes us to learn. We can generally understand what people are saying, and we can usually get our message across, but we still have a lot to learn. There are currently 20 volunteers at the station, but it varies constantly. They’re all fun and we’ll be sad to say goodbye to them!
On Wednesday 26th Nov all of the volunteers spent the morning transporting saplings to a tortoise habitat. We met the Galapagos tortoises… so cute! They look a little like ET.
We all spent the afternoon at a nearby beach, and swam with wild sea turtles. The beach was also covered in Sea Lions (small like seals, but they are not seals, the Sea Lions have fur), and a Blue Footed Boobie! (they also have red and black footed boobies).
No comments:
Post a Comment