Thursday, 27 May 2004

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS

Work day and travel day. We had a few hours in the morning to catch up on work, and were getting prepared for the bus ride to Baltra to catch the plane to San Cristobal, when we received a phone call from Eli. He called to say that if we got down to the park headquarters dock right away, we could get a ride with their boat that was heading to San Cristobal, which would put us into San Cristobal before 11:00. We packed up and got to the dock in about 12 minutes. Just as we were going down the boat ramp with all of our gear, we saw the boat heading into the harbor. Eli tried to call them by radio but could not raise them as their radio was off.

So, we went back to the hotel and waited for our ride to Baltra.

The trip to Baltra was a truck/ferry/bus combination and took from 9:30 until about 11:30. While waiting for our MTP passenger plane, the national-park guys offered us a ride on their small plane leaving immediately for San Cristobal. They could take two more passengers and no gear. So we jumped on and figured we could make up for some lost time that we needed in San Cristobal.

The flight took about a half hour to get to San Cristobal, and we headed directly to the park to start our inventory and the movement of all of the equipment up to the Galapaguera. As we got close to the park headquarters, there was quite a bit of black smoke in the air, and we then saw that the fishers had started a strike about an hour earlier and were blocking the road. The black smoke was from burning tires they ignited. They were not letting anyone into the park area, which is where the equipment is stored. We tried to find out how long the strike would last, and we were told probably four days. This would take us to Monday afternoon before we could inventory our equipment, and we planned on starting the installation on Sunday. We were concerned that the project completion would be in jeopardy.

We spent some time looking for alternatives and other ways to get into the warehouse where our equipment was, behind the line, but there were none, so we headed to the Galapaguera to check out the pre-installation of wood and mounting stations. The trip there was about a 45-minute drive, and by the time we got going it was about 4:00. Everything was in good order at the Galapaguera, except the mounting boards for the equipment were not yet installed. This is about a day’s work, so we headed back to town to talk to the park officials about what could be done to assure that this work was completed before the actual installation is scheduled to start (on Sunday).

Back in town, we learned that the strikers had struck all three islands, and were waiting to confirm an appointment with the minister of the environment before they would pull down the strike lines. We also learned that they had struck in Santa Cruz by closing down the road to the airport, about 15 minutes after we had passed. Had we been 20 minutes later leaving Santa Cruz, we would still be there now. (That explained a lot of extra security personnel we saw on the buses and at the airport ….)

We also learned that there was a chance that we might get access to the park headquarters tonight, if the minister of environment agreed to a meeting. He did, and the strike line was relaxed, and we were allowed to go in around 9 p.m. to inventory our equipment. It was too late to start moving it to the Galapaguera, so the park people said that they would be sure it went there first thing on Friday morning.

We had several ups and downs in the day today, but at the end, we came out okay, and still on schedule.

Tomorrow will be a teaching day.