The Monkeys Send Their Love.

Today I went on a peccary hunt. No joke. It was fantastic. After one of the guides heard a call across the river, a group of us piled into the canoe: Two guides (Jose and Mayer), Tomas (a local kitchen worker), Bess (another volunteer) and myself. We disembarked just downriver on the opposite bank, crossing into Yasuni National Park as we commenced our grand search for the white-collared peccary. We clambered up the bank and into the jungle to be greeted by a pissed-off spider monkey, jumping up and down on its chosen vine and hooting at us as it told us in no uncertain terms that we were unwelcome impostors. We continued on through the dense (and often spiky) vegetation, following Mayer and Tomas (who, it appears, has a bit more to himself than the come-ons he aims at me as I help prepare meals and clear dishes) as they tracked the peccaries, breaking branches along the way to mark our return path. Twenty minutes of fruitless searching culminated with the spotting of a couple trumpeters and a consensus that we had traveled too far downstream. After returning to the boat and tying up across from the station to make a second attempt, we slipped, fell, tripped, crunched, and stealthily slid our way around massive trees, over vines, up and down stream beds, through the water, and along peccary trails as Mayer and Tomas argued over our wisest route to interception. We passed vast sections of earth uprooted by the ungulates and huge masses of tapir scat piled under bushes... and then we heard a snorting scream go up in the near distance. We stalked closer, over a hill look over a stream bed. We heard more cries. The clack of tusks reached us over the rustle of vegetation as trees moved on the opposing bank. We slid down the muddy bank, clinging to vines and roots, and squelched through the water. The opposite bank was steep: we pulled each other up as the mud gave way beneath us. When we reached the top of the embankment, we found them: perhaps 30 peccaries, babies and all, snorting, clacking and grunting as they tore up the ground in their search for food. They ran. It was a living mass moving through the shrubbery, screams and clacking and babies' squeals converging into a giant cacophony. We followed. We sprinted through the jungle through the overwhelming stench, dodging spiny trunks and vines, humidity making sweat pour down our backs. After two minutes or so a lone baby remained, squealing as it ran through the underbrush to disappear behind a tree. Tomas gave chase, falling on top of it and capturing it against his chest before it slid through his arms and out of sight. Upon reconvening, we discovered a dilemma: no one knew which direction we had come from. In our frenzied running, we had forgotten to break branches. Jose, Mayer, and Tomas squabbled. After a few minutes the generator turned on in the distance, the sun decided to grace us with an appearance and we headed north toward the river and back to the canoe.

Peccaries aside, it's been a pretty fantastic week. There are four guides working at the station. Jose is my favorite: he's the first person I met when I arrived in January. I had picked up a giant fanned leaf from the ground and was examining it as he watched, at which point he said to me in his soft-spoken manner, “Bella hoja (Pretty leaf).” Which I managed to misinterpret as “Bella ojo (Pretty eye).” At which point I thought, What the hell, you're hitting on me? And then I figured out what he had said, and then he proceeded to tell me the story of the leaf and the history of the tree it came from. Jose is one of my three English students: he always comes with questions, which I can usually form an entire lesson out of. And for some reason he thinks I'm the shit: he takes me and Bess out on night walks every night and gets up to visit the tower for sunrise when we're able to skip out on the beginning of breakfast. And he takes us for hikes (with the excuse of going into the jungle with us to learn English vocabulary), bedazzling us with his vast knowledge. Ramiro is really, really good at spotting things, especially from the river. He gets crazy excited over pretty much anything and is also a fair bit of a jokster. Santiago is another of my English students; also quieter but full of knowledge. And then we have Mayer: a walking encyclopedia on jungle plants and medicinal uses. After 30 years as a jungle guide, he's also a fair bit of a master tracker.

We've been doing some other work as well as marking trails and teaching English: Saturday morning was spent with a computer, inputing data from previous years' turtle nests. Sunday we inventoried the entire contents of the kitchen, including produce, meat, pantry, and cleaning supplies. In Spanish. Tuesday morning we sorted through the station's immense first aid kit, disposing of perhaps 90% of the medications (expired) and reorganizing. Wednesday I went through the year's camera trap photos, labeling each with date, location, and time, coming across images of short-eared dogs, ocelots, armadillos, jaguars, tapirs, peccaries, and more.

Thursday morning we put up trail markers on one of the outer trails called Harpia and took Jose with us. We found two groups of chorongos (wooly monkeys), a red brocket deer (with tiny antlers), a red amazon squirrel (which, yes, is bright red and giant), a cuckoo, inch worms, assassin bugs (which, despite their eerie beauty, suck your blood when given the chance) and several nun birds. A large group of blue-and-yellow macaws flew overhead. Jose found a forest fruit that appeared remarkably similar to a star fruit until opened, and tasted like tangy cantaloupe. Having a guide to myself is amazing.

In terms of fun: It's the rainy season. Last Friday we looked up to see a blanket of flat, dark gray, and decided the canopy tower was the perfect way to spend an afternoon. We arrived moments after the downpour. It was like looking out through multiplying layers of fine gauze: trees simply disappeared, blending into a solid gray mass perhaps ½ kilometer out; usually we can see for miles.

A river float, although calm, turned up a king vulture, spider monkeys, capuchin monkeys, squirrel monkeys, and a boat-billed heron. During a night float we found caimans, a heron, a paca, bats, and night jars.

The ceiba tree is fruiting and the minuscule white orchids that cling to its branches have opened. We've seen gilded barbets, arasaris, green honeycreepers, euphonias, and a black-headed parrot. There are tanagers everywhere in the top of the tower, the most memorable being a green-and-gold tanager who flew into the bromeliads above us, splashing as it bathed itself, vibrant green and yellow feathers contrasting against the gray-green and maroon zebra-striped vegetation. A group of wooly monkeys passed through the canopy of the trees surrounding us, raising a racket in the leaves as they  jumped and swung between branches, babies on their backs, as close as 15 m. And: a poison dart frog, climbing its way up a vertical limb toward the bromeliads approximately 155 feet in the air, shiny black with brilliant yellow stripes and bright blue legs.

In the morning, while the canopy is still shrouded in mist and the moon hangs low, the Ceiba tree comes alive. As the first light arrives arasaris swarm into the tree, flapping noisily between the branches as they snatch up the bright red fruit. Then the tanagers come, flitting among the twigs as they daintily work their way through individual fruits. Honeycreepers pick their way among the flowers along with euphonias, and barbets join into the party.

A nighttime visit to the canopy walkway revealed a sleeping purple honeycreeper and bizarre praying mantises. Night walks have turned up lizards clinging to tree trunks and leaves, perfectly camouflaged in the moss behind the bromeliads, along with a fairly aggressive venomous centipede who jumped off the tree at my face when I poked it with a stick. Also: poison dart frogs, praying mantises, giant tree frogs, mating grasshoppers, scorpions, and an assortment of casi-deadly spiders (some shedding skins), not including the most awesome arachnid I have ever seen, its tiny black-and-yellow-striped body adorned with a rim of bright red spikes and two ginormous elongated curved bright blue spines. And hooting night monkeys, silhouetted perfectly by the moon as it shown brightly down directly behind them, as the crossed my path between the leafy branches of the trees on either side. It is entirely peaceful when all lights are turned out and moonlight finds its way down through the trees onto tiny patches among the leaves, literally glowing within the pitch black vegetation.

Salamanders Bite.

I lied. There's internet in the middle of the jungle. I'm doing a three-week volunteer stint at Tiputini (see “Into the Wild”). In other words, I currently have free reign to do whatever I please on a 40-km network of trails, including a canopy tower, a lagoon (with a boat), a river, and a canopy walkway.

I'd forgotten (or maybe I never realized) how many butterflies exist in the world. They are everywhere- giant, tiny, irridescent, transparent, white, yellow, black, lime green, turquoise, colbalt, deep forest green, hot pink, orange, speckled, splotched, striped, banded, polka-dotted... They headed up my welcoming committee to the Tiputini River, which also included a pink river dolphin, macaws, anhingas, egrets, squirrel monkeys, several turtles surrounded by white butterflies, and an additional mezcla of vibrant birds.

There are three things we as volunteers must do every day: Check the river's level, feed the turtles, and teach English. The river is fascinating: it has gone down by almost three meters since we arrived. The turtles reside in a chickenwire pen complete with pond and muddy, grassy bank. Taken as eggs from one of the rivers to be raised at the station, most are released in their first year. About a tenth are kept to compare their growth to the next year's, and so on. Currently there are 21 turtles: 18 from this year, two from last year, and one from 2008. Wednesday we spent the morning measuring the lot: length and width of carapace (top and bottom), height, eye color, weight and head width, before bestowing upon each individual a hot pink nail polish number. We were lucky: a month ago there were 150. As for food, they get the royal treatment of rotten lettuce and carrots from the kitchen.

Which brings me to teaching English. One of the activities I have always avoided at any cost whatsoever. Because it was terrifying. And I had no idea what to do. So when dear Juan Pablo informed me (on site) that I would be imparting my vast knowledge upon the staff, a little part of me died and I filled with foreboding and dread. I soon realized, however, that since it's optional, only two or three or four people come. And they come with questions, and things they want to learn, and they actually tell each other to shut up (quite the opposite of the 6-11 year olds I play with all summer long) when it looks like I want to say something. And they laugh at me, and I laugh at them, and we all laugh together for an hour after dinner as I stumble through my terrible Spanish grammar and spelling and they attempt to pronounce the parts of trees.

There are a couple other ongoing projects we're helping out with. The camera-trapping project, in place for several years now, consists of cameras placed at intervals along the trails set with heat and movement sensors. A slideshow of the awesome includes macaws, ocelots, short-eared dogs (mating), sloths, bats, and a black jaguar. Due to inhumane humidity the cameras are checked every week or so, as well as changed every so often to collect the photos; that's my job. The animal track project is also ongoing: whenever anyone finds a track, we take a photo, note where it was, and bring it back to stick in a database. These both contribute to understanding of diversity present in the area.

Speaking of location. Every trail is marked every 50 m with flagging and a metal disc, sharpied with the trail name and distance. I collect cans from the kitchen, cut out the top and bottom with the sharpest knife I can find, and paint the ones that aren't already white. I then hike systematically through the jungle with a hammer, discs, sharpie, flagging tape, nails, and a 50-m measuring tape, replacing tape and metal markers where they've ceased to exist.

There is no silence in the jungle. We wake to the sound of howling wind: the far-off territorial calls of red howlers. Throughout the day cicadas buzz, insects whine, and birds send up a racket. Night is louder, filled with more constant lulling rasps and trills of crickets, flapping of bats, and high chirps and low grunts of frogs and toads of all kinds and sizes. And at any given time, from the heavy air, downpours announce themselves in a deafening, rushing roar, drowning out the person shouting next to you and turning dry creekbeds into rushing rivers in a matter of minutes, eventually leaving behind the patter and splat of water drops crashing down from millions of leaves.

Everything looks the same. No, seriously. Step two meters off the trail and we may never find our way back. Even when we have the on-site director with us, as we discovered on Saturday in the process of making our way around a fallen palm as we changed cameras on one of the outer trails.

There is too much to describe: the senses are assulted from every direction at every moment with the mysterious and previously unknown. Instead, here are some highlights:

-Our first night, three of us headed to the canopy tower, from which the stars shown brilliantly out of the deep blue sky around the pitch black silhouette of the Ceiba tree's branches and the bromeliads adorning them. We lay on our backs counting shooting stars, contemplating the meaning of the universe in utter peace as frogs and crickets filled the night with sound from the branches around us.
-Speaking of which. The 45 m (~145') canopy tower. From which we have seen green tanagers and jays, and found the nest of a pygmy wren. Along with spider monkeys in the highest dead branches of an emerging tree, silhouetted against the sunset. And a white-necked puffbird sitting in the top of the tree, who darted off and came back with a giant green and yellow praying mantis and proceeded to whack it against the branch, attempting to kill it in vain for a full five minutes before losing its grip and dropping it into the leafy void below.
-The river float. Graced by three pink river dolphins spouting simultaneously as they surfaced next to the boat. And a caiman. In addition: a spectacled owl, black hawk, broadside hawk, scarlet macaws lit by the sinking sun as they flew over the river... oh yeah, and an anaconda thrashing in the water as it swallowed its dinner before proceeding to watch us from the river bank.
-Poison dart frogs, seven of them, of two species. 1: nondescript brown all over, brown-yellow speckled legs, and two bright yellow strips running down either side from the nose.2: ruby back, bright turquoise on the belly, and brilliant yellow on the elbows and knees. Carrying tadpoles on their backs.
-Lizards sunning themselves on the station walkways at noon, jet black with brilliant green-yellow heads that fade into stripes down their backs. Bright red lizards with spotted backs. Tree lizards, with smooth skin that for all intents and purposes appears to be folded and crinkled in geometric patterns, shadows and all, as the blend in perfectly among dead leaves. Black lizards adorned with bright blue, forest green, and yellow. Lime green lizards with black bodies and tails.
-Salamanders that bite when you pick them up. Massive frogs and toads that squirt blinding liquid when you get too close. Giant yellow and black beetles.
-Night walks. Complete with tarantulas, wolf spiders, banana spiders, army ants eating monolithic worms, poison dart frogs, scorpion spiders, tree frogs, crickets, cockroaches (ew), the world's smallest frog, three species of scorpion, and a snail-eating tree snake consuming a lizard head-first in the spaces of a minute.
-Paddling around the lagoon in the morning sun, while huatzins rasp and butterflies land on me and black caimans lurk in the shadows below overhanging branches. Curassows in the undergrowth on the trail back.
-Tracks from agouti, peccari, tapir, ocelot, and opossum... that I've identified. And here is where I hit myself repeatedly over the head for not bringing plaster.
-The trees next to our room, which appear to be a primate highway. So far: a group of squirrel monkeys and a family of golden-mantled tamarins.

I love my life.

Keyword: Sketch

After a couple nights in Quito and saying goodbye to my classmates, I spent Monday night in Cumbaya with my host family. It was wonderful to be back with such a welcoming, tight-knit, warm family in a clean house. There were no cockroaches, ants, or crickets attempting to take over my room, and no Miley Cyrus, Zac Efron, Vanesa Hudgens, Avril Lavigne, staring down from my bedroom walls. It felt like coming home.

I've turned into a tourist. Tuesday I took a bus to the town of Baños with a classmate and her family. In the process we managed to get on the wrong bus, courtesy of a driver who flat-out lied and informed us that his bus was direct to Baños... which we later realized was code for "I'm going to Ambato and I want your money." At every stop the bus made, the bus was boarded by people carrying bins of ice cream, platters of banana bread, banana chips, empañadas, newspapers, pirated CDs, gum, and soft drinks. Announcing their goods at the top of their lungs, they made their way to the back, shoving their goods in our faces before hurrying to jump off before the bus picked up too much speed. On occasion an individual would remain on board, regaling us with tales of political mishaps, bad luck, and in one case, a lecture on sexual health and examinations before walking through the aisle to collect donations.

Baños is touristy but beautiful, nestled in the base of the near-vertical hills surrounding Tungurahua. Unfortunately the clouds that accompany the rainy season concealed the tops of the hills, hiding the highly active volcano from view. A gorge cuts through the valley, the brown Rio PastazA rushing through the bottom, cutting the town off from the agricultural settlements on the hills situated to the other side. Our hostel looked out to a waterfall careening down the cliffs to one side and an old church, spires standing proud, to the other. Also, Baños is freezing.

Wednesday morning I woke up early. Clouds hung low in the valley, shrouding the cliffs. Upon walking to the waterfall visible from our hostel I discovered a narrow, vague path worn into the side of the cliff leading up from the base of the falls. I quickly discovered that running shoes are entirely insufficient for scrambling up near-vertical switchbacks composed of slick dirt and wet rocks, and that once you pull yourself up a sheer rock face with nothing to keep you from falling to your death if you slip, then you still have to get back down. From the top of the path, maybe halfway up the cliff, Baños appeared to be a quaint little town composed of legos set in rows in the bottom of a lush green bowl, patterns formed by crops crisscrossing the near inaccessible surrounding hills.

Later in the morning, we rented bikes to ride down the road running eastward toward the Jungle village of Puyo, following the river's gorge as it wound through the mountains. After crossing the gorge downriver of a giant hydroelectric dam, we continued on to pass around 15 waterfalls as tributaries plunged, either as graceful ribbons or thundering masses, into the Pastaza. A slight bit of drama ensued as three of the seven bikes managed to lose their chains at one point during the ride. By the time we reached the last fall we had descended into upper cloud forest-type vegetation. After walking a kilometer down into the gorge, we found ourselves on a wood-and rope bridge suspended over the gorge, allowing a view of el Pailon del Diablo, a giant waterfall crashing down onto a series of boulders before plunging to meet the other river. Walking our bikes back to the main road, we found ourselves assaulted by calls of, "A Baños? A Baños?" "Si!" We clambered into the back of a tarp-covered truck as the driver shoved our bikes into the opening, cutting out the majority of the light that would have seeped in from the very back. All too soon we discovered that, although our bikes were relatively secure, the benches upon which we sat were most definitely not. And so, we returned to Baños.

In the afternoon, we took part in a little bit of an adventure called canyoning. After taking an open-sided truck to a narrow dirt road, donning wetsuits, windbreakers, harnesses and helmets, we climbed to the top of a series of five cascades gracing the Rio Blanco. We then proceeded to rappel down through the cascades, the canyon rising up around us, enveloped by lush green overhanging vegetation. The joke started in the islands managed to pull through to the mainland: pee in the wetsuit, buy the guide a beer... or ten. According to the guides, the falls were 18 m, 20 m, 30 m, 10 m, and 5 m. According to me, the taller ones were shorter. According to the guides, we were entirely safe. According to me, we were asking for disaster. One of the ropes had lost the entirety of its outer layer in places; it should have been thrown out years ago. Caribeeners resided in the rock walls, exposed to the elements, waiting for ropes to be strung through. The guides didn't watch the people they were belaying, and didn't know how to belay correctly in the first place. One of the three guides had never actually been canyoning; instead, he was a rafting guide filling the quota. More often than not, I looked down to find them stepping on the ropes. However, despite the blatant disregard for safety, we screamed and laughed and descended through waterfalls in a steep canyon pretty much made of awesome.

Thursday morning we went to the thermal mineral baths situated directly under the waterfall near our hostel, where the main activity comprised of the sadistic but refreshing soak in scalding water followed by immersing oneself directly under water diverted from the falls. A couple of us then walked up into the hills opposite the town, past farmers and horses and donkeys and corn and tree tomato crops, to look down onto the town from the other side of the valley before catching the bus back to Quito... which was an experience in itself. We managed to find ourselves on the receiving end of action taken by the indigenous tribes as the protest a certain water law– not really sure of the specifics. Anyway, it involved roads blocked by burning trees, riot police, and a long, long detour through tiny dirt roads and rural agricultural regions directly through a series of volcanos and alongside Cotopaxi as it rose up from the plains. The Páramo forming the base of the perfect cone disappeared into the clouds, leaving the slightest miniscule amount of the snowcap peeking below. However, as we passed the mountain we were able to look back to the peak, glowing bright with late afternoon sunlight light as it towered above us.

I'm heading out of contact and into the wild again for a bit. Talk to yall when I get back in three weeks or so.

Chao, Mis Islas.

This being my last week on the islands, I figured I might as well make the most of it. On Tuesday I found myself on a speedboat heading out to León Dormido for the last time. Armed with thicker wetsuits and hoods to combat the cold, we dropped into the water just outside the rock. The current was fierce; we were sucked into the channel even as we dropped. The murky water yielded an eerie ambiance as we found ourselves kneeling on the bottom, wafting back and forth over the rippled sand. We were surrounded by fish– more fish than I had ever imagined could congregate in one place, most of the species unfamiliar. Vibrant colors flashed from those who passed nearby; above I simply found myself staring into a dense moshpot of varied silhouettes framed the sun’s weak rays as they filtered down through the murk... and then the sharks came. By twos and threes, black-tipped reef sharks and Galápagos sharks emerged out of the gloom, surrounding us as they swam past against the current. At one point, I counted ten sharks in my immediate vicinity. As soon as the school of sharks had disappeared two schools of eagle rays made their entrance, drifting lazily through the water above us.

Thursday we dove for our final time. The visibility was horrible. Somehow it didn’t matter. Our first dive, at Tijeretas, turned up an abundance of moray eels, a marbled ray, schools of creolefish. Oh, and a stonefish. Which pretty much made my week, since I had wanted to see one since we arrived on the islands. We were lucky no one set a hand down on it; they aren’t kidding when they call them stonefish. Its lumpy mass was entirely covered in mottled gray and brown, exactly the same color as the rock upon which it rested. A lobo in a playful mood decided to join our group, twisting among us, blowing bubbles in our faces, tugging on our fins, and gazing dolefully into our eyes... until she decided to get a little too friendly and snapped directly at my mask, teeth coming within three inches of biting half my face off. Our second dive, at the wreck, was relatively uneventful. We spent a good fifteen minutes watching our favorite seahorse as it clung to its chosen branch of coral sticking out from the rusted wall. A spiny lobster skittered into the shadows, sea cucumbers clung to the bottom of the propellers, and moray eels peered out from corroded pipes. And I spent a generous amount of time doing somersaults and handstands, enjoying my last gravity-free experience.

So now I’m sitting in the Guayaquil airport on a layover to Quito. With functional internet. And a coffee stand. Which sells really bad hot chocolate. Yes, I speak from experience. It’s weird: Looking back, I really felt no qualms about leaving the island over the past three weeks. It was only after I had hugged my crazy awesome, super skinny, ultra chill, culturally appropriate Galapagueño classmate and friend Ramiro goodbye and walked through security that I started feeling somewhat forlorn. And then the plane took off, and I realized how damn tiny the town was that I had spent my last three months in. Really, it’s no surprise we can walk from one end to the other in 10 minutes. It’s a cluster of ramshackle buildings sticking out from a slope next to the ocean. And then I looked down through a break in the clouds to León Dormido, rising solid and defiant out of the sea, and I started getting all these flashbacks of the ocean, and fish, and lobos, and hammerheads, and the unique feeling of being suspended in a 3-D environment, water everywhere around me, free to propel myself in any direction I pleased with no noticeable force pulling me downward.

At the moment, obviously, I’m in just a little more pensive mood than usual and feeling generous about sharing the inner me: which, unless you’re one of a very select number of people, tends to happen on incredibly rare occasion. So take advantage of it… for the moment, I’ll settle with a rundown of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Things I will not miss: Cockroaches. Stink beetles. Mosquitoes. Streets strewn with dead and flattened rats, chickens and cats. And trash. Everywhere. Karaoke “Oops I Did it Again,” off key, repeatedly, in my living room. Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.” Anything else associated with the name Avril Lavigne, Brittany Spears, or tween Hollywood. Whistling, catcalls, come-ons, hissing, insinuations, suggestions, and blatant sexual advances. By 15-year olds. By 20-year olds. By 50-year olds. By cops. Nope, not kidding. Rice. Salt. Stale white bread. Boiled potatoes. Machismo culture. Jokes from my host dad in response to which, were I in the states, I would most likely file for a restraining order. Fried fruit. The omnipresent smell of raw sewage. An overabundance of puppies and emaciated strays living off trash. The stagnant 90° house.

Things I will miss: 85 and sunny with an evening breeze. Hammerheads. The sea. Frigatebirds, boobies, octopi, rays, and lobos. Even the ones who chase me. Being chased by sharks. Fire poi on the beach. Diving. My classmates. Even the bizarre ones. For the most part. But seriously, they were amazing. Shay, my wonderful Israeli divemaster, who gave me matzo and made my week during Passover. Chocolate-covered frozen bananas. A giant market of cheap fresh fruit situated a block from home. They giant, unobstructed black sky full of stars shining down in all their glory.

So, I’m back on the continent. I honestly have no idea whether I’ll have time to write in the next month, mas o menos, so don’t hold your breath. Love and hugs to everyone at home; I miss you guys.

PS. I’m posting this from Quito, and trust me, I have without doubt found my way out of Kansas. It’s 60°. It’s freezing. The end.

Lazy Days

The last two weeks have been crazy calm. The weather’s getting a slight bit cooler as the transition to the cool season begins, courtesy of the Humboldt current making itself known– we get some breezes and cloud cover during the day. On occasion it gets a little chilly at night; I wore a sweatshirt for the first time in three months. The water is frigid. I’ve picked up a slight phobia of swimming in it, since people have had weird sores and armpit infections popping up: most likely courtesy of the town’s sewage dump site’s alarming location between the most popular beaches, surf and snorkel sites. The town’s nonfunctional hospital is currently overwhelmed with Dengue Fever, to which only one of us (the students) has managed to fall victim. So far. I’m doing independent study for a professor rather than sit in a stagnant 80° classroom through the mornings. Instead, I get to chill out watching lobos four hours a day. Evenings have included a lot of fire spinning on the beach and the fishing pier, resulting in a rather large quantity of singed arm hair and eyebrows as I take advantage of the opportunity to pick up some new tricks from a friend much more badass than myself. I know, life is hard.

In the absence of anything super exciting to report, I figured I’d throw out a few more fun facts:

• It takes approximately 30 minutes for a frigatebird to inflate his pouch and 45 for deflation. I think. He will site in the same place for up to three weeks, without eating, to wait for a mate.
• Hammerheads are one of three species known to tan in response to sun exposure, the others being humans and pigs.
• Our resident scalloped hammerheads are among those known to attack humans.
• On a similar note, Galápagos sharks happen to be closely related to great whites, hence the previously noted stalking of groups of snorkelers including yours truly at right around dinnertime.
• Don’t ask about black-tips; I don’t know the answer.
• Blue-footed boobies’ feet are like flamingos’ feathers: they change color in response to their diet. Blue is “unhealthy;” turquoise is fantastic.
• The vampire finch, a subspecies of the sharp-beaked ground finch found only on Darwin and Wolf Islands, supplements its diet by drinking the blood of nazca and blue-footed boobies.
• A giant tortoise will outlive yourself, your children, and quite possibly your grandchildren.
• The temperature inside the nest determines the sex of turtle and tortoise hatchlings. So, if climate change keeps up, we’re gonna have rather a lot of females on our hands.
• Multiple species of Scalesia are members of the daisy family that have morphed into giant trees.
• Galápagos hawks are polyandrous.

I hear it's getting warmer in the states– hope everyone's enjoying the sun.