.... are you supposed to be scared inside a lava tunnel ... it sounds like you should be ...

the volcano on santa cruz ... or is it the volcano that IS santa cruz island in the galapagos hasn't erupted in a million years, give or take a couple years .... when it was erupting, lava would flow out and the outer edges would cool and harden in the air ... kind of like the crust of bread baking harder and faster than the inside .... once that crust was cooled and hardened, lave kept flowing through it ... sometimes the lava flowed out all together, leaving empty tubes... tunnels ... santa cruz is full of them .... we went in one ...

here's a picture of us inside, no flash, looking back up towards the hole entrance ...

here is the exact same picture ..... and, oh, let's turn the flash on.... so we were walking in very dark darkness, except for the intermittent electric lights ... and the occasional flash photography ... 

sophie was nervous about being in a lava tube... scientifically speaking it is interesting ... but conversationally, it's kinda creepy weird ... yup, let's walk in the huge dark tunnel that leads down into the ground where the hot lava used to flow ... very journey to the center of the earth like ... and you just have to believe dora the explorer when she says it's completely safe, sophie, the lava isn't flowing any more ... hasn't in a million years .... let's try and grasp how long a million years is ... nope, can't do it ...

this tunnel is a HUGE one ... this is about a quarter mile into it and still the ceiling is very high ... some lava tubes are tiny ... i imagine that the wider they are like this, the longer they are likely to be too, right?

dora said you could walk miles into this one .... but it was super muddy ... and the farther we got, the darker and the muddier it became ...

when i was standing outside the lobby of my hotel, looking far in the distance, i asked my hostess how far away the ocean was ... it looked to me to be ten miles? ... she said it was a 24 hour hike away .... but that if you tried to hike it, you would die .... harsh, right? why would you die ... lots of reasons, but the one most pertinent to this blog post is that there are lava tubes all through the area even though it looked like forest .... so if you tried to walk, some of those lava tubes have thin walls and you'd just go crashing through them ... and maybe fall all the way to the center of the earth .... so ... we didn't walk that way ...

here we are on our way out of this one ...

tomorrow's blog?

safari camp ....

when darwin said he saw giant turtles, he was NOT kidding ... giant, giant, giant ....

... just to review .... we left home saturday afternoon, flew to quito, slept in a hotel, flew to guayaquill, flew on to galapagos, took a bus, took a ferry, took jaime's mini van, visited craters, walked through the scalesia forest in the highlands of santa cruz island, went to lunch .... and then we went to the tortoise reserve ...

the tortoise reserves are to save valuable land for turtles that was being encroached on by cattle ... it seemed to me that everyone on santa cruz was a)a tourist b)working in the tourist industry or c)a farmer .... most everywhere we drove there were farms ... and lots of cows .... dora the explorer is not partial to cows or cow birds because they are not indigenous and are bad for the endemic species of animals and plants ....

so ... the tortoise reserves are large expanses of lands where the turtles would be going anyway ... and it's left safe for them ... cow free ... i don't think cows are bad for grown turtles, they just compete for the same greenery .... dogs and ants (non endemic species both) are also bad for turtle populations cause they eat the turtle eggs .... it's a hard go being a tortoise ... even if you are giant .... there are national park turtle reserves and private ones as well on the perimeters of the national park space .....

the turtle reserve we went to was kind of funny to me ... it was a large piece of land with random paths through it ... some paths were clearly the main ones, well trampled..... all were windy and circuitous .... some were hardly trod ... are you sure this is a path? .. in our case, we just followed dora the explorer ... she took us down paths that others were not taking so we'd see our own turtles .. not the ones that everyone else was gawking at ...

this is a well worn path, clearly defined:

dora, andy, drew, sophie and julia in the back ... i'm clearly lagging behind ... 

below? sophie on the road less travelled ... 

.....way less travelled .... imagine andy wondering aloud if there's poison ivy on turtle reserves in the galapagos ... is there endemic galapagan poison ivy? 

i know lots about the giant galapagos tortoise ... like .. they are only found in the galapagos .. there are 10 species left ... there were 15 when darwin visited ... 5 have become extinct ... i think we can mostly blame pirates for it! they used to stow the turtles in their pirate ships ... upside down so they wouldn't roam .. they'd stay alive for months and months ... and the pirates had fresh turtle meat whenever they decided to kill one from down in the hold ... darn pirates ... those plates on the turtle shell have age rings on them ... like in a tree ... average male giant galapagos turtle is four feet ... 450 (i think) pounds .... the only native predator to the turtles are hawks ... who eat the eggs .... (i'll have a hawk picture in a not too distant blog post)..... the turtles in these pics have dome shaped shells ... that's what turtles have when they live in wet and lush lands cause they mostly reach down ... dry area turtles have saddle shells ... with a notch out ... so their necks can do more stretching to reach food that is not so easily obtainable .... 

and it was extraordinary ... there were giant turtles everywhere ... everywhere ... in the mud, in the grass, in the bushes, under the tree, on the path ...

and they were walking and snorting and sleeping and eating and happy and annoyed and scared ... we only saw one that seemed truly scared of us and got all pulled into his shell .... but i can vouch, that big head, long neck, and thick legs and feet do indeed all pull back into that shell ....

my little scientific brain (the scientific part of me is wee) wonders why we don't just call these things dinosaurs ... to me they seem so clearly related .... i know we don't know what colors dinos were ... but i imagine they are that turtle color .... i know we don't know what they sounded like, but surely some of them made that same snuffling growling snorting sound .... (just wait til about 20 blog posts from now when i tell you about the turtles we saw mating ... now, that's a dinosaur noise ... how's that for a teaser to get you coming back?) .... ...and weren't some of the dinos armour plated? hello? just like these massive turtles, right? .... giant turtles are cold blooded ... and when i first learned about dinosaurs they were cold blooded too ... or so the science books said ... now, scientists debate whether they are cold or warm blooded ..... anyway ... i think turtles are related to dinosaurs even if no one else does, ok?

julia here is five foot six, 100 pounds ... i'd say there's room for about four more of her inside that shell ..

..... at 6 feet, drew is way to long for the shell , but it's still super roomy on the inside ...

and sophie ... she's just little .... she didn't even complain about having to squirm inside .... like the big kids did ...

tomorrow? lava tunnels ....

.... volcanos and craters and such ...

when we flew into the galapagos islands, we landed on baltra ... baltra used to be called south seymour (remember that, one of the coolest islands is north seymour) .... in the early 20th century the united states military built an airport and military base on south seymour and it was renamed baltra ... baltra is flat because it is a geological uplift ... from tectonic plates shifting ... as opposed to the islands that are mountainous or full of craters because of volcanic formation ....  in the early days of the airport, all of the endemic animals on it became extinct ... dogs, goats, rats and bored soldiers with guns were to blame

.... prior to extinction one soldier with an environmentalist/naturalist leaning (in the 30s) took about 20 giant land iguanas to north seymour to protect them .... he saved them from extinction ... 

when we left baltra on our ferry, we crossed the VERY narrow itabaca channel to santa cruz .... santa cruz is the second largest island in the galapagos and most populated ... isabella is largest, far to the west, and we did not go there .... santa cruz is a dormant volcano ... thank goodness for dormant, huh?

here is my traveling family on our first day, straight from the airport ... or straight by plane, bus, ferry, van.....standing next to los gemelos ... a giant crater that is now lush and green and alternately rocky .... it is a collapsed magma chamber ... inside the earth there was a giant bubble of magma (lava) and the bubble essentially popped, leaving a crater, a bowl, a hole, a tourist spot along the road .... it is stunningly big ... and leaves you very aware that you are in volcano land .... luckily, scientists think the last time it erupted was about a million years ago ... seriously, a million years .... that's a long time ....

 so this los gemelos means the twins ... there are two of them ... the street cuts right between them .... you go see one pit crater and then cross the street and see its partner .... one is impressive... two though? doubly so ....

after our crater visit, we went to a much needed lunch at a farmhouse restaurant .... they set up a buffet just for my family and dora .... chicken and fish and potatos and vegetables and all sorts of stuff .... i can't remember the exact name of the restaurant ... ariella? it meant witch's hat .... here's where you can tell that my travel journaling at the end of each day was done under the cloud of exhaustion! none of us could remember the name of where we had lunch!

from lunch? off to the giant tortoise reserve ....

more about that tomorrow ....