Española Island

The second day we headed down to Española Island. At Gardner Bay, we saw many sea lions and this one was especially cute. It kept ´running´ for a while and then just plopping down. I think it was frustrated because no other sea lions would play with it. We also saw him going right up to some kids and laying on their sand castles.


Our first image a Punta Suarez was of the sweetest little sea lion who was only about a week old. Now this is the face of the Galapagos!

We also saw very quickly many marine iguanas. The Galapagos Islands are the only place in the world that has marine iguanas. I will show you in a later post what is so special about these guys.

This next bird is another type of boobie, called the Nazca boobie. We also saw red footed boobies flying around, but never saw them perched, so no pictures.

The scenery on this island was incredible with steep cliffs in the background. With the binoculars, we could see many birds flying around these cliffs and one type who lived perched right on the cliff.

This next bird is a nocturnal gull and is one of the swallowtail gulls. If you look closely, you can see the red around its eyes. They hunt only at night and this red coloring helps them to see at nighttime.


We saw more blue footed boobies and Scott got an especially good picture of one here. One thing about this boobie that I forgot to mention is that the Galapagos is the only place where these guys live. The Galapagos has many creatures like this and this is one of the things that makes the islands so magical. Not to mention how much protection there is here and how much work is being done to keep them pure. We even washed off our shoes after coming back from one island so that we would not spread seeds to another island. The picture following is of the Sally Lightfoot crab that we saw on many of the islands.

The next video on this post has a funny story to go along with it. The video is of a blow hole that we saw while walking at Punta Suarez. When a big wave would come, a huge gust of water would come out of the hole. The funny part of the story is that while we were watching, when one very big wave came, we saw a marine iguana come flying out of the hole with the water. It had its arms and legs flailing and was such a funny sight. Hopefully your imagination can replace the video of that part.

Galapagos

Since we were in Ecuador already, of course we had to make a trip to the Galapagos Islands. Everyone we´ve met in our travels who have been have told us that it would be the highlight of our trip. And it really was! I felt like I was living on a Discovery Channel program for 8 days - absolutely incredible.

When we got off the plane in the Galapagos, we hopped on a short bus ride to the dock where we would catch a panga ride to our boat. We were immediately greeted by sea lions lying all over the dock, including on the benches. We were amazed at how close we were able to get to them, but this was nothing (keep tuned to more posts).

We hopped on the pangas (small boats to take us to our big boat) and arrived to our boat, the Beluga. We quickly met the 13 other passengers we would be spending the next 8 days with and immediately liked them all. Throughout the week, we really enjoyed getting to know them all and sharing stories about travels. It was nice because they were all at least our age or older, so it was not like the very young tourists we met while traveling in Costa Rica. Many of them were also on long travels where they had quit jobs and were traveling for 6-12 months. The long-term travelers, however were from either the UK or Australia. We are learning that this is much more accepted in these other countries.



We had our first adventure on this very first day where we traveled from the island of Baltra to North Seymour Island. As I´ve mentioned in earlier posts, before our travels we were not all that interested in birds, but Costa Rica started us with more excitement for birds. The Galapagos multiplied this by 100 times even. What made these birds so exciting were that they were so big first of all and you can get so close to them. We also learned so many facts, but of course I can not remember all of these. This first picture is one of a female friggot bird and young in the background. The next is of a male friggot bird trying to find a mate with his red pouch. It was so cool to see them flying around with these red pouches hanging. The sounds that they made were awesome, too, but I was not able to get a video. I can make the sound, though, so just ask me when you see me next. :D The next picture is also of a friggot bird, but this time of one a bit older than the white one you saw in the first picture. It is almost grown, but only its head is still white.


Perhaps one of the most popular birds in the Galapagos is the blue footed boobies. They are all over the place and are easy to spot because of their very blue feet. Here we have a baby and an adult.

Cotopaxi

We took an overnight trip up to the volcano called Cotopaxi. The elevation of the tip of this volcano is over 19,000 feet, but as we have not had the time to train for this type of summit, we just hung around at the base of the volcano. We went on a horseback riding trip that gave some great views of the countryside in this area. Since Scott and I are not used to horseback riding, we were incredibly sore by the end of our four hour journey. I greatly needed my cousin Kelly, who is the pro at riding to help me out in guiding my horse. She did not want to listen to me at all. Actually, I´m not sure if it was a she or a he, but as she took on many of my own characteristics, we will call her she. She would not turn when I told her to and even kept taking off in gallops whenever she felt like it. She did not like following at all, whereas Scott´s horse loved to just follow behind any other horse he could find. It was fun gaining a connection with my horse for those 4 hours. She would stop and move her head up as to communicate with me and after I pet her neck, she would continue on. I should mention that the ride was only supposed to be 3 hours, but our guide kept getting lost. so it took another full hour.



We kept running into streams and so we would have to continue on until we found a way to cross. Our guide didn´t say a single word to us the entire time - not even hello. That was a little weird. I think I had a much better time than Scott because he was noticeably more sore than me at the end and for days after, but I very much appreciated him going with me. We did keep seeing wild horses in the fields and they were so pretty. I thought our horses must be so jealous of the wild one. The views were great and we very much enjoyed Tambopaxi, the hotel where we stayed. It is a base for many people climbing the summit and we were able to see some of these people in the telescope that they had there.

Quito

We went one day to the La Basilica church that you can see from all over the city, especially at night. It is an absolutley amazingly beautiful church and is so large that I was not able to get the whole thing in one shot. This is a newer church in which construction was begun in 1926 and it is still being built. What we liked so much about this one is that we were able to go absolutely everywhere in the church, including up to the very top of the highest tower.

¡ECUADOR!

We made it to Ecuador safely for our next adventure. We´ve actually been here for over 2 weeks now, but I have just now had time to catch up with some blogging. We have been very fortunate here because Scott has a friend of a friend, Dan who lives in Quito and has been extremely kind to allow us to use his home as a home base for our travels around Ecuador. It´s been very nice to be able to stay in a real home again after so long. Quito is a city at over 9000 feet in altitude and I definitely noticed this as we walked around the city. It is almost twice as high as Denver, if you can imagine that!




One day we went up a cable car to a place call Teleferico. The altitude at the top is 4100 meters, which is almost 13,500 feet! From the top, you can see the beautiful peak of the Cotopaxi volcano in the distance. The views of the city were incredible. We had a glass of wine at this height, so that we could put more of a reason to our already drunken feeling. In talking to Dan, we learned that there has been a history of much political unrest in Ecuador. Apparently, they have not been able to have a president complete a 4 year term in many years because there is always a turnover due to the indigenous people revolting. We found this very interesting and very much enjoyed speaking with his co-workers and friends one night when we went out. Apparently, there is a lot of racism against people of different colors of skin in the country. The country is split up so that most of the pure indigenous people are in the north, the mestizos (people with split blood between the indians and the Spanish) are mainly in the center and the lighter skinned and haired Spanish people are mainly in the south.

Quito is by far the most developed place that we have been since starting our travels. The roads, malls, etc. are just like what you would find in the United States. However, the infrastructure for getting things done is even further behind than the last two countries we have visited. We had to spend a full 2 days to book the tours that we would be taking on our stay in Ecuador. It was quite stressful, but makes us again feel lucky to have the infrastructure that we have in the US.


There are still many children and poorer families begging in the touristy sections of town. After breakfast one day, we took our pounds of potatoes to go so that we could share some of the food that we wouldn´t finish. Within a minute of walking into old town, as I was about to take a picture of Scott in the center, the cutest little boy walked right up to Scott and took the food out of his hand. He ran back to his family with a huge smile on his face for the food he was able to bring to them.



Quito has many beautiful churches, especially in the Old Town section. This one is called La Compania church and was constructed starting in the 1600´s and finished in 1765. It was a church built by the Jesuits. The inside was incredibly ornate with gold on almost everything you could see.

The fall of the Mayans

Many people say that the Mayan empire just eventually disappeared without much reason, but we learned of 3 very good reasons as to why the Mayans moved on. The key here is that the Mayan culture died, but the Mayan people did not die out. More than half of the population of Guatemala is still of Mayan heritage, so obviously, they did not die out. In addition, the Mayans had two major collapses, one at the end of the pre-classic period and the larger collapse after which the Mayan culture began to die out at the end of the classic period (~800 AD).
Theory 1: Overpopulation
Proof shows that families were having up to 20 kids per couple. I think the range was about 10-20, but in any case, there were a LOT of kids being born into the Tikal area, particularly during the classical period. It is highly likely that there was just not enough food, water, and land for all of the people that eventually inhabited this area. In fact, deforestation and slash and burn agriculture (Mayans continuously planted the same crops in the same locations, the land was eventually worn out and they were not able to grow their crops any longer) badly damaged the land.
Theory 2: Drought
They relied on collected and pooled rain water; not rivers or lakes, to water crops, cook, and drink. Several periods of short drought occurred, but a long drought of more than two years would have been devastating to the already crowded area. Many believe that in the late 8th century a large drought occurred which may have lasted more than 5 years.
Theory 3: War
As was mentioned previously, the lower class consisted of 80% of the population. Eventually, as they had more and more children and were treated poorly, they revolted against the upper class in order to take over the land. In particular, the king made promises of rain and food and when times got tough, the people revolted against the king. In addition, neighboring tribes often invaded to acquire resources. The arrival of the Spanish also led to a huge amount of people leaving the area.

The Mayan people live on today, but unfortunately many of the languages and beliefs are quickly dissipating. This was a very educational trip for us, not to mention completely fascinating.





Although the Mayan empire is no longer at Tikal, there is a lot of life still here. For just a few examples: a huge beetle, a monkey playing on one of the temples, and the most colorful, beautiful turkeys I´ve ever seen.

We also went to a closeby museum that had a few artifacts that have not been taken to other museums. Some of the coolest things were these teeny tiny paintings on bone or other materials. I was not able to get a good picture of the small paintings, but they are what the larger paintings were based upon. Incredible how they could paint this on such small objects.

During the Mayan empire, there was a lot of jade in the area. Because of this, tons of jade has been found in the graves of the great rulers. A lot of it has been taken away to other museums, but a little bit remained here.

Many of these large stone carvings have been taken away from the Tikal structures so that they can be kept safe. This was one of the best ones that we saw. You can see the front and part of the back in these two pictures. There were also carvings on the sides of the stones. The symbols on the back were their form of writing.

Mayan Religion

We also learned a lot about the Mayan religion while we were at Tikal. The first thing our guide told us is that they believed there were 13 levels above the earth which reprsented different levels of heaven. There were 9 levels below the earth which comprised the underworld. Their religion seems most similar to Buddism, but instead of reincarnation, they believed a bit differently. Once a person dies, their soul would go to one of the levels of the underworld or one of the levels in heaven, depending on how they lived their life. If they went to the underworld they may be able to suffer a punishment then be sent to heaven or their soul may come back in an animal. If the soul went to the heavens, it would become recycled and eventually enter Earth as a whole and the the cycle would start over again. Everything that they believed was very cyclical. Their heaven was in the constellation of Orion and the 13 levels basically made their way up to Orion. Much of their beliefs revolved around the suns and the earths. One interesting thing here is that they believed that the sun was turning and not the Earth. They had some of their buildings and temples set up, such that they could read the equinoxes from the way the sun shone on these structures. At the days of the equinoxes, in December, March and June, the sun would shine perfectly to cast a shadow from one structure onto another. They used this to be able to tell what time of the year it was so that they would know when to plant their crops. It took a lot of time for them to build the structures just perfectly, but over many years they were able to do this. Ingenious!

This was part of the Southern Acropolis. We walked around all inside of these structures and were able to see all sorts of rooms and podiums, etc. Scott laughed at me when I made a comment about how small the rooms were. :D



In the Northern Acropolis, there were a few different faces, but this one was in the best condition. I was amazed at how long this detail has lasted in time! The next pictures show some more amazing detail on the side of a couple of the temples.

This is a good example of how many of the temples are still completely covered with the forest that they have lived amongst for so many generations. The top of this one has been uncovered, but some of them have nothing but trees on the top and look like hills in the middle of a forest.

Tikal

We took a quick 2-day trip up to Tikal by plane and were absolutely amazed by everything we saw. This is one of the most spectacular Mayan ruins anywhere and is covered by jungle now. The time period when this land was settled and used was around 800 BC to 900 AD. Around 750 AD, the nucleus of the city was about 65 square Km! Tikal was ´rediscovered´in 1848, though not much could be seen because everything had been grown over by jungle life. Most of the work for excavation has been done since the 1950´s. Many of the structures have been rebuilt to an extent and so I think a lot of what we saw is some guesswork as to what the original structures looked like. The original structures also had a lot of color on them, but of course this is hard to imagine now. It would be awesome to see just a second in time from that time period. Part of the early work done on excavations was done by foreignors and unfortunately, they took a lot of what they found. One of the first explorers in this region was Bernoli from Basel, Switzerland. There was an agreement that for the work he did on the site, he would be free to take whatever he wanted. Due to this, a lot of what he found is back in a museum in Basel. Similar people followed suit after this. There was a time period where the University of Pennsylvania did a lot of excavation work, but fortunately, they left everything they found for the Guatemalan people. After 1986, the site was turned over to the Guatemalan government and they continue to do work here and probably will for many years.



Temple 1, shown here is the most famous of structures at Tikal and is the one shown on all advertisements, postcards, etc. This temple is also know as the Big Jaguar. It is 47m in height and was built in the year 700 AD by the ruler at the time whose tomb was discovered underneath the temple (unlike Egypt, these pyramids are solid and chambers are dug below the structure after construction). The next picture is next to the temple and is part of the Gran Plaza, specifically this area is called Acropolis del Norte. This area has been damaged and built back up numerous times, typically corresponding with a change in the ruling dynasty. As a consequence, this area chronicles the history of some of the rulers of the area. From atop this area, we could see out onto the rest of the Gran Plaza, including Temple I on the left, Temple II on the right (built for the wife of ruler under Temple I) and Acropolis Central in the back. This was the central area for people at the time of the Mayans.

This was the first structure that we saw and there are another probably 20 just like it, but most are still covered up by earth. It is a lot of work to uncover these structures from dirt, trees, roots and all of the life that has grown over in the last 1000 years, so they have not all been uncovered and hopefully most will remain uncovered.

On top of one of the structures in the Lost World (from the pre-classic Mayan era), we could see this image. This is a good picture to show how the entire Tikal area is in the middle of a vast forest. The farthest building that you can see is Temple IV, or the two-headed snake temple. It is the tallest temple in Tikal and in all Mesoamerica. It was built in 740 AD (during the end of the classic Mayan era) by the son or grandson of the first ruler whom built Temple I. Temple IV is 64.6m tall from the base (which is below ground level).

The Mayans probably settled on this spot because it was the highest elevation in all of the lowlands. Probably several reasons they choose this spot, they were above swampland, could spot potential invaders, and many archaeologists suspect a religious motivation...to be closer to the gods. The site is not located near enough to any lake or streams, so they created large quarries to collect rainwater (limestone is rather pourous, so they dug out the soil and patched the limestone with plaster). They also got all of the limestone that they used for these buildings in closeby quarries. Some of these structures were bigger than you can imagine and the tallest one took about 35 or so years to build. They made tools with flint to be able to extract this limestone.


In the population at Tikal, only about 20% of the people were the high class and about 80% were of a much lower class. There was a lot of turnover in rulers due to fighting within the group and between cities. When one ruler would take over, he would often times destroy the tops of temples and build a new layer for himself. Because of this, many of the temples have as many as 25 levels.

Temples I and II were built such that on March 21st and September 21st, the sun casts a shadow from Temple I to cover Temple II completely. These two temples were built for a ruler and his wife to show that they would always be together. This is a great example of how highly the Mayan people thought of women. They were very important in the Mayan society, mainly because of their childbearing abilities.