Day 20 in Ecuador!

Hey y’all it’s Brian!

Today in the morning we had the opportunity to visit the headquarters of the Galapagos National Park, that also included the Charles Darwin Institute. Our tour guide Rafa gave us an extensive tour throughout the center as he explained facts and details about the Galapagos that make these islands as distinct as they are. One that stuck out to me was how Blue-Footed Boobies are built to be the perfect diving machine. A Blue-Footed Booby has an arrow-like head to be able to cut through the water tension when it dives. When diving, their eyelids close up from a down to up position rather than up to down, as humans and a majority of animals do as going down to up aids in protecting vision when crashing into the water. Another fact about these birds is that they have special air sacs in their skulls that aid in cushioning their crash into the ocean that would otherwise very quickly cause cranial damage that would result in a very short lifespan. 

After the institute, we had lunch and soon began to survey residents and toursits alike that went into the afternoon where we had another successful day as we are nearing the ends of our surveying days. After surveying, we did a bit of gift shopping for friends and family before eating dinner at Nazca. For dinner we had either pork ribs or fried fish that all tasted incredible and left of full and ready to watch baby sharks by the pier that concluded another successful day in Santa Cruz!

See y’all soon!