North Seymour, Friget birds, sea lions, land iguanas, blue footed boobies and crabs. Island Sombrero Chino, On land: Galapagos Hawks, sea lions, Marine Iguanas, crabs and Pelicans. In the Water 100 different types of fish, white tip reef shark, stingray, Marine Iguanas and lots lots more fish! Bartolome Island On the Island: Lava lizards, Grasshoppers and Galapagos Hawks. On the dingy Ride: Penguins, sea lions, Blue footed boobies, reef shark ad bird life. Genovesa island On land: Sea birds, herons, Friget birds, sea lions, blue footed boobies, red footed boobies, Nazcar boobies, Marine Iguanas and baby boobies. Snorkelling: Millions of fish, octopus, scorpion fish (poisonous), seals & sea lions and pelicans. In the Dingy: Friget birds, fur seals, Sea birds, Nazcar Boobies and Red footed boobies. Santiago Island On land: Marine iguanas, seals, fur seals & sea lions, giant tortoise, crabs and Galapagos hawks. Rabida island On land: Sea lions and birds Snorkelling: 1000000 different typeset of fish, stingray, reef shark, Marine Iguanas 15 different seals swam with us and a scorpion fish (poisonous). Charles Darwin center Santa Cruz Island Dome shelled tortoises, saddle back tortoises, land Iguanas, Lonsome George's Grave and little baby tortoises. The highlands What we saw; NATIVE GIANT TORTISES within touching distance. What we did: Walked through a lava tunnel, said goodbye to the friends we made on the boat as this was the final day on our cruz The Angelito!! And so ends our time in the Galapagos, our minds are now full with wonderful memories. Memories of animals of people, of landscapes and of rough seas. But this is a place that everyone should see, so I hope to see you there in the next week. Oscar :)
I'm going to tell you how chocolate goes from the pod to the packet. The first thing they do when making chocolate is to cut the pods off the tree when they are ripe. Then they take out the white seeds and put them in boxes covered up so they ferment. After 6 days they put the fermented seeds on a bed to dry out. Once the seeds are dried they are roasted and they separate the outer shell from the chocolate inside. This is put into a press to make a chocolate paste. The paste is then pored into a machine and milk and sugar is added to make sweet. This mixture is stirred for about 2 days and then placed into moulds to make the chocolate bar.
Our first tree house in Chile was cool, but not as cool as a tree house in the clouds! We started our journey down yes down towards the cloud forest at 6.25 in the morning. We finally arrived to Bellavista in time for breakfast in our tree house which is the picture above. Then we set of on our first walk through the cloud forest hoping to spot some birds and guess what WE DID!! The first bird we herd was a Tucan so we decided to have a look, we found three of them and I was first to spot one. We saw many different birds also on our walk like the wood creeper who walks up and down the trees, and many other small but coulorful birds. This place is also called hummingbird heaven and in the next picture you can see why..... This are the feeders right out front of the tree house and there are so many humming birds coming in and out every minute. There were also many different hummingbirds that we saw. But not only humming birds like the feeders at Bellavista, these natives squirrels like to sip the half water half sugar liquid out of the feeders as well. This is the ladder we had to climb up every time we wanted to get to our penthouse, not really a penthouse though sort of like a Simons family (budget) penthouse up the top of the Bellavista tree house. You may be able to see it on the first photo. Me and dad got up and 4.40am in the morning to go and see this amazing bird called the "cock of the rock" which is the bird in the picture now. This next picture is one off the internet as this is the best I could get. We saw about 12 of these birds making really strange noises but it was an amazing bird to see. I got a really good view of them through my binoculars and I could see the little red Afro on the top of its head. This was the final thing I did at Bellavista Cloud Forest Reserve Oscar:)
What haven't we done on this trip, we've been skiing on glaciers, surfed beaches in Brazil and Uruguay, seen penguins and seals, stayed in crazy hotels, seen volcanoes, rode horses, stayed on farms- well you get the idea. But the one thing we haven't done is the jungle. So that is what we did on 7th of December. We arrived at San Pedro after a long day of travelling, from there we rode in a canoe along the Rio Napo for about 30 minutes until we reached the Yacuma Lodge in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Before heading into the jungle we needed to paint our faces with a natural paint that Mario (our guide) put on us so the jungle would respect us while we went on our 4 hour trek to the bat cave. We had fun painting a patern or two on Mario. After this we set out on our walk through the jungle on the 8th of December. This is the Black Saber tree which is about 500 years old. There are two types of Saber tree the Black one, which is the one in the picture and the White Saber tree which is smaller. The Black saber tree can live between 800-1000 years, and the white one can live between 400-700 years. The Saber trees are very useful to the native Kitchuwas who live in the Ecuadorian region of the Amazon. It Is useful because the roots of this tree grow 2-3 meters above the ground so the Kitchuwas can beat a thick stick against the roots and it ecos out a message to other villages within a 2-3 km radious. They could be warning them about danger or that someone has died or even that they have killed a jaguar to eat. The reason this tree can grow up to its enourmas size is it's roots create a sterdy anchor that can support the tree and stops it slipping benith the soft Amazonian soil, unlike many other trees. There are leaves in the jungle that are useful for the people of the region. Mario made us a cup out of two medium sized leaves, which can then be used for scooping up water to drink from the river, or to cook with. The photo above shows one they use when they catch the fish. They tie the parcel up with a little vine that grows on most trees. They then carry it back to village and place it on the fire so the fish can cook. The leaves don't burn because they are green, which means it is perfect to cook with. We finally arrived at the bat cave after 2 hours of trekking in the 80% humidity of the Amazon. The bat cave was nice and cool but only Scarlett, dad, Mario and I went in because mum freaked out and didn't want to go in. It was cool watching them fly 25 cm above our head. Then we started our 1.5hr walk back, plus a 10 minute boat ride back to the Yacuma lodge. The start of our second day was a walk to the native Kitchuwa village. Our guide made us many different things out of the leaves. This is the devils costume which he made me out of the flowers of a very common plant in this part of the Jungle. The Kitchuwa people make the thatched roof on there houses by curing the leaf of a palm tree. They need to dry the leaves first then join them together to create a water proof roof. We slept under a roof like this in our hut and when it poured with rain there wasn't a drip to be seen inside! We also went to a local school. There were about 14 students of all different ages k-6 and only one teacher. After they finished their soccer game in the rain the children came back into the classroom dripping wet. All of them shook our hands with happy smiles. They sang a song for us in Kitchuwa and then it was our turn to sing to them. Mum suggest we sing jingle bells. It was really embarrassing. We introduced our selves but of course dad got his Spanish completely wrong and instead of saying mi nombre he said mi nueve (9). We showed them were we are from and mum imitated a kangaroo. Embarrassing again. The kids don't have much stuff but they look happy, and that's the most important thing. Oscar :)
The Walking Trees roots grow on the outside of the tree which pulls the tree in the direction the roots are going into the soil. So the tree seems to be moving and that's why it's called a Walking tree. The Dragon Tree is called this because it's sap is the colour of blood when you cut into the bark. The sap is used for healing things like cuts, sore and grazes on the skin. The native Kichwa people would rub the sap on the sore bit and it would clean the cut. When you rub it onto the skin it would turn from blood red to white. If you had an upset belly you would mix the sap with a lot of water and drink it. You can't have the sap on its own as it is too strong and will poison you. Termite nests in tree's are also used by the Kichwa people. They would stick their finger inside the termites nest so the termites will come out. Then they would rub the termites and squash them on their skin. This is an insect repellent. The mums also burn termite mounds to create smoke that keeps bugs away from their sleeping babies.Termites like to eat the inside of the tree. It's takes 3 years for the tree to be destroyed by the termites. One of the things the Kichwa people grow is coca beans. This is what chocolate is made from. Yum!! When the pod is red it is ready to be chopped down from the tree. They take the coca beans from the pod and they dry them out. After 6 days they are ready to be sold at market.
This farm breads butterfly's so that the butterfly's in Ecuador don't fade. Here are some butterfly's transforming into a butterfly's and it takes 3mins to transform! Here's a photo of a clear butterfly Me and my mums favourite butterfly was the blue one because it was so blue
You'd never believe I,d stay in a treehouse on this trip but gues what I stayed in one for 4 days called canopy village!!!!!!!!! This is what it looks like inside the treehouse. The shape of the house is a hexagon,it's just like a bird house. The place that we stayed was called Huilohuilo Reserva (sounds like wheel-o wheel-o) and there are many things you can do. My favourite day out of the whole time here was skiing. We went on the snow cat up to get our skies on. Then the snow cat took us up to the mountain which is also a glacier and a volcano.In the distance you can see a lonely volcano and it looked spectacular. At first I was a little rusty although after a few goes I was able to ski down without poles. Meanwhile on our drive back to Orsorno we stopped at this place called Therma Geologica which are hot springs. Hot springs are made by water underground rushing over the hot volcanic rock which heats up the water and makes steaming springs. The pools had the temperature written on the outside. The coldest was 7 degree's and the hottest was 40 degree's which was a little bit too hot. We sat in the wonderful pools and relaxed. These springs have a healing power because of the minerals in the water. Today is Tuesday 3rd of December and we are in Santiago. Tomorrow we catch our plane to Ecuador. Love Scarlett x
If South America has the same seasons as Australia then what would we be doing now, at the beach, preparing for Christmas and anything else that involves sun. Well what we did today involved sun but in a different way because...... WE WENT SKIING in summer!! Yes that's right today we went Skiing on top of Volcan Mocho which was indescribable. We had to get up early and come down to the tree house at 8.00 so we could be driven up to the top of the mountain where the snow is. We got our skis on and jumped in the cat ski (oversnow). This is the Volcano that we skied on, and did you know that this is the only place in South America and maybe even the world that you can ski in the summer. So it's pretty special that we got to do it!! This is the slope we went down about 10 times which was about a blue run, these jumps are here because there was a snow board comp about 2 days ago. This was so fun going off the jumps but not to fast I case this happens.... After Once we finished our 10 runs Mum, Dad, Sebastion ( our guide) and another instructor skied down a black slope to get back to the refuge, Scarlett and I could not do it as we were not experienced enough. This was an amazing day and who would of thought skiing in summer holidays!! Oscar :-)
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