What is the Secret of the Ooze?

I grew up on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Behind Travis Fryman, Joe Dumars, and a Case 580K Operator, they probably had the biggest influence on me as a child). Every day, after preschool, I would go back to my friend´s house and watch the cartoon. At my 6th birthday party, Leonardo (himself) showed up and taught us some awesome moves. When the first movie came out, it was probably the most anticipated day of my young life. That meant expectations for the second Turtles movie (The Secret of the Ooze) were about as high as the expectation for the Tigers offense this season.

Most thought that the Turtles movies and television shows were pure fiction. Just a scheme to make some money and provide entertainment to the world´s youth. I was in that camp, too. (notice the past tense) After going to Galapagos, I now believe in the secret of the ooze.

(Warning: only two pictures because my camera decided to seizure halfway through uploading (When you go to the dunes, put your camera in a case; not your pocket). It´s a very tense situation here, but I just want everybody´s thoughts to be with my camera. I hope we can recover and send pictures next time I have internet access)

Nature´s joke on everybody

The Giant Turtle is the most hilarious species on this planet.The combination of size, shell, slow movement, Darth Vader-like noises when it moves its head or legs, and general lack of proportionality make it impossible to take it seriously. (Look at the attached picture and try not to laugh It´s impossible) When people were first landing at the Galapagos, they weren´t taking the tutle population seriously, either. Because the giant turtles are huge and can go more than a year without eating (adding to its hilarity), pirates would take them from the islands and store them on the boats for long voyages (both for food, tortoise rides, and to turn on their backs and knock around like green Mario shells). The problem is that the pirates took almost all the giant turtles from Galapagos and put the species on the brink of extinction.

At the Charles Darwin Center and the Giant Turtle Breeding Center, they are trying to reintroduce these creatures back into the wild.

A few fun facts about the Giant Tortoise before we continue:
-At its maximum speed, the giant tortoise can move 300 meters/hour. That's a forty-yard ¨dash¨ of about eight minutes.
-Most of the turtle shell contains the animal´s liver. So if an animal has a liver that big, it must have a high tolerance.
-Turtles can live for over 170 years
- Other than Galapagos, giant turtles are only native to Seychelles (off the African coast)

The world´s most famous and eligible tortoise

His name is Lonesome George. He is on the only surviving member of the Pinto Island Turtles (A new species evolved on each island). He is 100 years old and is expected to live a full 170 year life. There are no females of his species remaining.

They tried to bring in female turtles of similar species to see if he would breed with them, and the guy who cloned Dolly the sheep spent a few years at Galapagos. But George remains lonely.

I think that they made a mistake by naming him George. From what I know from Seinfeld, things with the name George are very complex.

The pushke at the Darwin Center is in the shape of Lonesome George.

What are the odds that I see another erupting volcano?

I could run some type of simulations using Excel and probabilities, but I think I already know the answer: slim. After watching the volcano in Baños, I thought that I had seen enough lava flows for my entire life. But the night that we arrived in Isabela (after the Galapagos cruise, Ari and I spent three days in the most remote of the inhabited Galapagos islands), one of the two active volcanoes on the island erupted.

It´s far enough away that it doesn´t pose any threat to the island´s inhabitants, but close enough that you can get a pretty awesome view. But Ari and I went to sleep before it started erupting, and no one woke us up to see this ¨once in a lifetime¨ event. The next day, it was cloudy, so we couldn´t see if it was still erupting.

The next night, as we were walking through town after dinner, Ari noticed an orange/red light in the direction of the volcano.We also noticed the entire town transfixed on the volcano. We weren´´t going to pass up this opportunity. We had to get the best view we could.

Everybody said the best possible view was from a lookout point seven kilometers from town. We put on our bug spray and pants and got our flashlights and headed down the road, hoping we could hitch a ride with one of the locals who was also going to the lookout point, unfortunately everybody went the night before and wasn´t as ambitious on the second night.

We didn´t know exactly where the viewpoint was but because there is only one road on the island, it would be nearly impossible to get lost. We stopped at every viewpoint along the way, until we finally arrived at the last one. To get there, we had to pass through Muro de Las Lagrimas (Wall of Tears), whch is a wall constructed by prisoners of the Ecuador jail that operated on Isabela in the 1950s. The prisoners were put to work to construct their own jail without the assistance of concrete of anything to hold the rocks together. After starting our excursion at at least 10:00, we finally arrived to the viewing spot.

From there, you could clearly see the lava flowing and bubbling up, but we were far enough away that you couldn´t really hear it.

I´m 21 years old, and I´m yelling ´moo, cow´ in a river

Now, I wasn´t actually driving the herd. I was simply riding a horse. But for me, any opportunity to make a City Slickers reference will be seized (and probably abused). On our first day in Isabela, we went for a horseback ride to the Sierra Negra Volcano, which erupted a few years ago and you can see the lava flows.

My horse´s name for the adventure was Puropaso, and no matter how much I tried to control him, he just seemed to do whatever he wanted. He would only listen to our guide, Carlos, or to the guys from the stables.I´m glad that he had a pretty calm demeanor because one of the people from our group got bucked off.

It was my first time back in the saddle (literally) in at least a decade. And I could feel it after.

The other name I was considering for this email section was: Everyone, this is Puropaso.

Wait, the internet is on computers now?

There is no internet on the island of Isabela. It is the only place in the world that I have been that does not have an internet connection. The municipality maintains a website, but I think it has an office on one of the other islands.

There is even a building that claims to be an internet cafe, but it just has computers in boxes.

A car quota

As the city of Isabela started to sprawl out (it´s a relative term), the citizens started bringing cars to the town. But as more cars arrived, traffic, congestion, and noise accompanied it. The municipal government of Isabela decided to put a stop to this by imposing a quota on the number of cars that can be in the city (65ish).

People can exchange their old cars for new ones, but they can´t buy a new one. It makes for a really pleasant, pedestrian-friendly town. But this policy would only work on islands. Otherwise, it would be nearly impossible to manage.

Mystery, Alaska in Galapagos

Now, I don´t really remember too much of the movie except that the New York Rangers traveled to some remote town in Alaska to play an exhibition game against the local pond team. Why the Rangers would travel for such a ridiculous game is beyond me, but that is unrelated to the message of this bullet point.

On Friday afternoon, when everybody was done with work for the week, a bunch of men from Isabela gathered on the municipal soccer pitch for a game of pick up futbol. In one of the most remote places on Earth with limited connection to the outside world, the beautiful game is the most popular sport. And at that time, nothing mattered more to them than the pride (and few dollars) of winning the afternoon´s game.

Now, all they need is for a professional soccer team to come play an exhibition on Isabela. I´m pretty sure every MLS team would lose (That makes two MLS digs in the blog, Ian. Come on.)

Is that a sea lion? No, it´s my guide

On our last day in Isabela, we had the chance to go snorkeling with sea lions and penguins. As I said in the previous email about Galapagos, the animals here aren´t afraid of people; they´re curious. It´s the same on land and in the sea.

When you are snorkeling near a sea lion, they want to swim near you and play with you. All of a sudden, you turn your head and there are three sea lions within a few feet of you. At one point, I confused our guide, Carlos, for a sea lion. He has the same body shape, and when he´s wearing flippers and I´m not wearing my glasses, it´s easy to confuse them. Carlos got a good laugh out of it.

Penguins are very quick animals. They will swim within a few feet of you and then quickly bolt away.

Galapagos Triage

When the volcano erupted a few years ago, the tortoises living on the island were airlifted to safety. Some of the best animal research and treatment in the world is available to the Islands´oldest (and slowest) citizens.

At the same time, there is no hospital for humans on the Galapagos. It might take up to 10 hours for a human to get treatment because they would have to fly to the mainland.

There was once an oil spill in the islands. Environmental organizations would pay locals a lot of money to assist in the clean-up effort and save the animals. Because these organizations offered a lot of money, the locals didn´t really care what safety precautions were being taken. But the environmental organizations didn´t properly protect the locals and many got sick from assisting in the oil-spill cleanup.