Quito and Equator

On the way back from Galapagos, Mary and I had a full day in Quito, so we took a tour of the old city. It's very European looking, with cobblestone streets and beautiful churches. Our tour included a visit to the equator, about 30 minutes drive north of Quito. They've made it into a tourist destination, with displays showing Indian life in the different regions of Ecuador, and activities demonstrating how the clockwise and counterclockwise forces of the Coriolis Effect cancel each other out at the equator. And of course, there's a line painted along the equator that you can walk on, or straddle to have one foot in each hemisphere.


This is the first half of the instructions on how to make a shrunken head. It was part of the display about the Amazon region of Ecuador. There were also creepy animals, like giant spiders, a humongous anaconda, and the fish that swims up your urinary tract if you pee in the Amazon. Mary hid in the coastal Indian exhibit until our group left the Amazon area.

Tortoises

On our last day there, Mary and I took a boat over to Santa Cruz, the main tourist island, to visit the Darwin Research Station. When we got to the tortoise hatchery, all the baby tortoises were eating lunch, so we had a good time watching them. One of the journalism students was interviewing Lonesome George, the last tortoise from Pinta Island, when we were there, so seeing her working on her story became part of our story.

Hiking and snorkeling

Scott was working most of the time, but Mary and I took him out for a long lunch break a couple of times. This time, we hiked up to a scenic overlook, then down to a beautiful lagoon for a swim. We only had Mary's mask and snorkel, so we took turns using it. Scott saw a sea lion doing somersaults in the water. I saw lots of brightly colored fish and some seaweed that looked like fan coral.

San Cristobal waterfront

We spent most of our time on San Cristobal, the capitol of Galapagos. It's not the biggest tourist island, so even the big hotels on the tourist strip are only a few stories high. In this photo, Mary is playing with a bunch of local kids after school let out for the afternoon. This little lagoon area is completely dry at low tide, but turns into a fun waterpark at high tide. Sea lions like to play there, too. It's just down the block from the soft-serve ice cream place where Mary would order un helado mixto, por favor every afternoon.

Galapagos adventure: Sea lions

Our internet's been cranky lately, but I'll try to upload some trip photos whenever it's working.

We saw more sea lions than any other animal on our Galapagos trip. Mostly, you see them sleeping on the beach. They also sleep under park benches, and on rocks. There are usually a few out swimming as well. One time when I was sitting on the beach, a sea lion came up to investigate. It walked all around me and sniffed my beach towel and my shoes before choosing a new spot to snooze. The first day we were there, Mary gave all the sea lions names and built a sand castle right next to a little one sleeping on a rock. We saw lots of mothers and pups on the beaches.

Catching up

We've been busy lately, but I've slacked off on posting photos of our activities. Here's what we've been up to:

Visiting local farms on the annual Piedmont Farm Tour. We visited two dairy farms, ate ice cream cones, and sampled cheese, chocolate milk, and hamburgers (that's what happens to the bulls on a dairy farm).






Finding our way through the woods at an orienteering event. Mary and I had an electronic scanner, and we had to use our map and compass to find 9 checkpoints in the right order. At each checkpoint, we scanned our device, and when we finished the course, we got a printout showing how long it took us to find each one. It took us about 90 minutes to do the whole course. The longest it took to find a checkpoint was when the most direct route was blocked by an "Area Closed" sign, so we had to backtrack and figure out another way to get there.



Showing Flat Stanley around town. In case you haven't heard of him, Flat Stanley is a character from a children's book. He was a normal kid until his bulletin board fell on him and flattened him. He discovered he could fit into and envelope and visit places. This is a popular elementary school project, and our niece Megan's class is doing a Flat Stanley project now. Her school sent us the Flat Stanley Megan made and asked us to send him back with pictures and other information about our area. Stanley visited my fencing class, Audrey's ballet class, helped out in the garden at home, met Anoop from American Idol and got his autograph, went sight-seeing around campus, and treated us to popsicles. We made him a UNC T-shirt and sent him back with a bumper sticker commemorating the college basketball championship.



Meeting Anoop from American Idol. We haven't watched the show in several seasons, so the kids had no idea who he was, but Flat Stanley was a big fan, so we all went to the meet-n-greet. Mary was impressed by the bowl of potato chips he had sitting out.



Visiting the NCSU College of Veterinary Medicine. The rain was kind enough to stop long enough to let us do the outside part of the tour. We saw all the farm animals the vet school students practice their large animal medicine on. The big pile of fluffy stuff is cotton seeds, which the cows love to eat. The pig area was pretty smelly, but the kids enjoyed petting a piglet. After the tour, a professor showed us animal skulls, lungs, stomachs, and other parts, and talked about the differences between carnivore and herbivore skulls and digestive tracts. Then we moved to another classroom to learn about careers in veterinary medicine. Mary, of course, was a lively participant in every discussion.

Scrap Art Zoo

The mall near here has an art exhibit called Scrapel Hill Art. Area artists created pieces out of recyclable and non-recyclable materials. In the spirit of Scrapel Hill, we decided to make our own Scrap Art Zoo.



Here are all the animals. There are two giraffes, an elephant, a bear and a mouse.



Mary made the giraffes. Most of the parts she needed were in the recycling bin, but she had to dig through the bathroom garbage for a toilet paper roll.



Audrey made the elephant. The can lid is the tail, the milk container is the trunk, and two plastic lids from salad containers are the big ears.



I made the little mouse.



Mary didn't think the zoo had enough animals, so she used whatever was left to make this bear. Lucky for our zoo I forgot to put the recycling bins out last week. We'll save our zoo critters for a while, but everything else gets put out tonight for tomorrow's pick-up.