Month: January 2025

Adjusting to life on the Galápagos can be a little difficult at first. Quito is a massive city with tons of things to do and places to see, while within a few days on San Cristóbal you will have seen everything you possibly can within walking distance of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. To some people this might feel stifling or trapping, but I personally enjoyed the change of pace. Besides, we also had our classes to keep us busy.

Our first course in the Galápagos was Island Biogeography, focused on the mechanics of island formation and how an island’s location and geography affect the species that move to and evolve on it. The Galápagos, with its extensive list of endemic species (‘endemic’ meaning that it is only found in a single area, in this case the Galápagos), is a prime location for learning these concepts. Our knowledge was also augmented by extensive field studies. Our first major one was a 3-day trip to the nearby island of Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz is the most populated island on the Galápagos, with 15,000 people, and as such, it is generally considered the ‘main’ island, at least for tourism operations. To get there from San Cristobal, you must take a 2-hour ‘water taxi’; while I personally never have much trouble with boats, the high speed and rough seas were an issue for more seasick-prone people.

Once on Santa Cruz, we spent the first day on the southern half of the island, visiting a tortoise sanctuary and a highland preserve to get a better understanding of the Galápagos’ famous giant tortoises, and how they serve an important role in the Galápagos’ terrestrial ecosystems.

The second day was focused more on the aquatic environment; we traveled to the northern end of the island and spent the day on a boat to North Seymour Island, a small island (less than 1 square mile in size!) just north of Santa Cruz. There, we took a snorkeling trip to see the local marine wildlife and took a small hike on North Seymour to observe the nests of various seabirds like the blue-footed booby and magnificent frigatebird.

The rest of the second day and the first half of the third day, we essentially had to ourselves to explore Santa Cruz’s main town of Puerto Ayora. It was a significantly larger town than Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, with more shops, restaurants, and hotels, but definitely felt more ‘touristy’ than San Cristóbal did.  However, having spent a couple weeks on San Cristóbal at this point, it was good to get a feel for a different island in the archipelago.  Plus, the tourist aspect gave us a good opportunity to buy souvenirs!

Kai

After seven weeks on the Ecuadorian mainland, it was finally time for us to transfer to the Galápagos, where we would spend the remaining ten weeks of the semester. USFQ’s Galápagos campus is located on the island of San Cristóbal, the second most populous island in the archipelago. To get there, we took a flight from Quito direct to San Cristóbal with a short stopover in Guayaquil to pick up some additional passengers.

Disembarking at San Cristóbal.

My first impressions of the Galápagos, upon arrival, reminded me in some ways of the arid parts of Hawai’i, where I grew up and still live; the mix of low, dry vegetation with rocky shores and sandy beaches was similar to parts of O’ahu in the dry summers. However, there were two major differences that were immediately apparent; first, the lack of mountains and second, the extent of human habitation.

San Cristobal is estimated to have a population of around 7,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in a single town, Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. While that might still sound like a lot of people, consider that McMinnville has a population of around 35,000. So Mac – which most people probably wouldn’t consider to be a very large town – has around five times as many people as the entirety of San Cristóbal!

Obviously, though, this is to be expected – after all, the Galápagos is famous not for any big towns and crowds but rather for its wildlife and natural environment. And indeed this was also evident; for instance, we encountered sea lions almost immediately after arriving, laying about on the beaches and even in the streets in parts of town close to the shore. While I’ve seen seals and sea lions in the wild before, the sheer number that were sprawled out on the beach was shocking.

The USFQ campus is located on the northern end of town, right in front of Playa Mann, the town’s main beach. Like in Quito, we all lived with local host families; this time, I lived with a family of four. The environment there was really different from my host experience in Quito, but it wasn’t a bad change. While we had the weekend to re-orient to life on the islands, when Monday came around, we went right back to work to take our first Galápagos classes.

Kai

After our week in the Amazon, our Tropical Ecology course shifted focus from the Amazon rain forest to the mountainous highlands that surrounded Quito. While this cold, grassy environment might not be the first thing you think of when you hear “tropical”, since they are in the tropics regardless, they can still be considered a tropical environment.

The highlands of the northern Andes are known as the páramo, and are classified by low shrubs and grasses, high winds, and fluctuating temperatures, much like many other mountainous environments around the world. Much like with the Amazon, our understanding of this environment was deepened by a long field study, although this one was only three days, quite a bit shorter than the almost week-long Amazon trip.

During this trip, we were based out of a mountain lodge on the slopes of Rumiñahui, a small mountain just north of the Cotopaxi volcano, arguably Ecuador’s most famous mountain. It was an older but very cozy place, and stayed nice and warm during the nights, when the temperatures would sometimes drop below freezing due to the altitude, dry climate, and high winds. Our fieldwork on-site consisted of soil sampling and observational work, using soil nutrient and chemical analysis devices to determine the quality and water-carrying capacity of the soil; the soils of the South American páramos also function as massive water reservoirs, meaning that they are extremely important to not only Ecuador’s natural ecosystems but its human residents as well. We also spent a lot of time hiking around the nearby mountains and identifying local plant and animal species so as to better understand these mountain ecosystems.

Overall, while the páramo trip might not sound quite as exciting as our week in the Amazon, I personally found it to be really interesting and enjoyable, with a lot of time to ourselves to explore this area of the Ecuadorian Andes on our own terms in addition to our class activities. However, our time in the mainland was coming to an end; soon, we would be transferring to the USFQ’s Galápagos campus, where we would be spending the rest of the semester.

While it was a shame to be leaving soon, the prospect of going to the Galápagos – the location this program is focused on, after all – was extremely exciting to all of us.

Kai