Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Category: Personal

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.

B

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

Rio Pacuare rafting

Just back from an excellent white water rafting experience with Explornatura. The trip was good value at $220 including an overnight stay at the remote and beautiful campsite by the river.

Its now the end of the dry season so the river was running a bit low but still plenty to have fun over the rapids and also to get some swimming in between.

All my photos are on Picasa at:-

White water rafting the Rio Pacuare

and a map of the route (including breaks in the GPS where I went swimming) is up on Everytrail:-

White water rafting the Rio Pacuare

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We also went to visit a local indigenous community and their new school and sewage digestor. They hope to make it into a tourist attraction 🙂