Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Author: Geoff

Getting around Cristobal

After 12 hours here in The Galapagos I decided to extend my stay for another week!

A quick bike ride to the airport,then about 12 steps from parking the bike to the AeroGal office followed by about 10 clicks on her computer and the job was done, no charge, no fuss. Airports and booking as it should be 🙂

I then decided to cycle up the extinct volcano to see the El Junco crater lake, after  a few hundred yards a local taxi driver in his Toyota pick up suggested a lift up the 1000ft ascent for $10, since it was in the thirties I thought it was a grand idea (sorry Andrew you are 19 and I’m 62!). A lovely walk around the lake watching the birds washing the salt of their wings then back to the bike and the mainly descent to the La Galapguera de Cello Colorado Tortoise breeding station and then onto the white sand and beach at Puerto Chino.

On the way back the taxi carrying my 2 new American friends, who I met on the beach, stopped to give me a quick lift up the worst incline, I learned from him that you can rent an apartment for $150 a MONTH here, interestingly his girlfriend hs just arrived after his 3 months away 🙂

The trip with pics is here.

San Cristobal, Galapagos cycle/walk/taxi

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Tomorrow I’m boating over to Isabela via Santa Cruz for $55 a 4 hour ride. co

Arrival 90degrees from Cambridge.

Finally, about 50 years after Stan and I marvelled at huge tortoises, I’ve arrived at The Galapagos islands interestingly at the same place that Darwin landed t 200 years ago! I guess better late than never 🙂

This afternoon I did a little walk by the cultural centre which is full of profoundly depressing stuff about the slaughter of the local tortoises to provide oil for lamps 🙁 and the maltreatment of prisoners ( it was a prison colony for a while) plus the introduction of non native animals oh dear we homo sapiens are a stupid lot!

Here is a map and some pictures of the walk.

San Cristobal, Galapagos

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Now the debate in my head is how long to stay, I’m booked out on a flight on Friday but I think that will be changed 🙂

My problem is that I do really love travelling just hanging out in cafes listening to other folks and the ocean…

Maybe I can turn Sally into a traveller too, sounds s though she is getting fed up living where she is at the minute …….

250km shopping trip..

Today I tagged along with Margaret and her driver for an all day shopping trip up north from Quito.

First stop was Calderon where they specialise in making highly coloured figurines from bread dough or masapan. Reasonably interesting and I guess where Oxfam gets some of its clutter from. A little factoid garnered was that apparently Gap clothes now makes its buttons from nuts, so called wood ivory (see the image)

We then moved onto Otavalo market which must be famous for its tiny people anyone who is 5 foot tall would look big here! Brilliant array of stuff , although how you get to carry hammocks and carpets home is a problem that clearly needs resolving!.

Then onto Cotacachi which is a village devoted to making leather goods all very reasonably priced if you like walking around in dead animal skins, apparently it has been hard hit by the new purchase tax regime.

Finally after lunch we visited Ibarra apparently renowned for its wood carving, they seem to specialize in concave breasts and statues of a mother holding a baby above her head plus various other religious themes.

The images are here:-

and no I didn’t buy anything, as all I could imagine was more trips to the charity shops in a few months time….

Where is The Equator?

Today I ventured out of Quito with Margaret (who I met in Samara in my first language class) to find The Equator.

Armed with my Garmin GPS we took the public transport buses, 50 cents for a 30km journey, to Mitad del Mundo where the Equator was determined in 1736 and the nearby Museo Inti-Nan which claims to be on the actual equator as determined by someones GPS. However , my Garmin told a different story! Here are the traces for the day:-

The lower trace is Mitad del Mundo, the centre one is museo inti-Nan and the one at zero is my Garmin…
Wikipedia has more on the subject here

Before we did the Equator we visited the rim of the old Pululahua crater which was interesting to see a community sitting on top of a volcano, like Yellowstone National Park in the USA!

The photographs of the day are on Picasa.

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By the way the trick of showing the water going down the plughole in opposite directions in each hemisphere is revealed in some detail here