Galapagos: Santa Cruz (Round 1)

As many of you know, I spent the last few weeks of June/first week of July in the Galapagos Islands and Ecuador. I went with a group of 16 people for a class at the University. It was an absolutely incredible trip! Since I could literally fill a book (and I did while there) with all the stories and things I saw, I'm just going to do a photo highlight to keep it shorter. With that in mind this is part 1 of 4 (5 if you count the video), and since I took close to 4,000 pictures and videos it's still probably going to be longer! I've given up on short posts. Expect the rest to come out periodically throughout the summer!  

The first 3 days of our trip we stayed in Puerto Ayora on the island of Santa Cruz. This is the largest city in the Galapagos with about 12,000 inhabitants.  

 After a travel day from hell, me and Araceli got first class! 

 Our hotel in Quito, Ecuador. Too bad we were only there 4 hours!

Quito, Ecuador.

 Ecuador. On our way to the Galapagos.

 They love soup in South America. Never mind that it's 80+ degrees out!

Our hotel with a Marine Iguana on the roof. 

     

Baby Marine Iguana.

 Me with a Marine Iguana on our first day in Puerto Ayora.

 Marine Iguanas. 

Boats in the Harbor of Puerto Ayora.

Sunset.

                    A lizard climbed onto Brett when he leaned against a tree.

We ventured to the market our second day on Santa Cruz. [Liv, Brett, Elise, Lan, Deb]

Our destination for the day.

Opuntia cactus on the trail. 

Hidden along the trail was the Italian Consulate. 

Walking. [Liv, Kara, Brett, Forest]

                                                                 Las Grietas.

  

Swimming.

   

German Beach.

Puerto Ayora from the roof of our hotel. 
Elise.

Laundry out to dry.

Gecko. Sadly later this little guy got eaten by a bigger gecko.

First of MANY sea lion sightings.

Our third day in Puerto Ayora we hiked to Tortuga Bay.

Tortuga Bay.

 Marine Iguana.

Beach bummin.

Group lunch.

Lonesome George, last of the Pinta tortoises. Since this picture was taken George died, meaning the extinction of his entire species. :( 

Jaz and Liv.

Forrest.

 Drawer of finches at the invertebrate lab at the Charles Darwin Research Station. This is where my professor works for the summer.

Sir David Attenborough's name in the visitor log. The BBC was filming at the station the week prior.

The next day we left Santa Cruz for our week long boat tour on the Yacht Darwin. Post will be coming in the next week! 

Orlando.

Last week me and Steph made the journey down to Orlando to visit Kelsey. Went spent 5 days splitting our time between Cocca Beach, Magic Kingdom, Epcot, SeaWorld, and Universal. It was such a fun vacation and I can't wait to do it all again! :] 

Here's some highlights of the trip:

Alaska in motion.

As promised here is a video of some of our adventures in Alaska! Enjoy!

Alaska.

Since mother nature decided to give MN and WI a warm spell during my spring break, naturally I ended up traveling to a colder climate!

My very good friend and old roommate, Ellen, has been doing an Americorps program since June in Sitka, AK. So naturally I had to go visit her! :)

Life of a standby can be interesting to say the least, and my trip to Sitka was definitely an adventure.....all uphill!

My schedule had me leaving Minneapolis at 9:30 am and arriving in Sitka at 7:30pm with 2 layovers in Seattle and Ketchikan. I successfully made it to Seattle where I then missed 2 flights and ended up spending the night. So a night of free Wifi, Netflix, and a set of semi comfortable chairs later I got on a 8am flight to Ketchikan.

When I got there the agent informed me that I should try going through Juneau as the flight looked 10 times better than any flight out of Ketchikan to Sitka. I agreed, and was all set to go, until the gate agent forgot to clear nonrevs and closed the flight...without me on it. My only options left for the day was to try for the completely booked direct flight and the connecting flight to Juneau, which would get me in to Sitka around 11pm that night. So 8 hours, 1 book, and a few good conversations with randoms in the airport lead me departure time for the direct.

Thankfully the plane going to Sitka got switched out with a bigger plane due to a delayed flight to Seattle earlier in the day. At this point my luck was looking up, until the Sitka flight got delayed due to weather. After stressing me out for another hour and a half I finally got on my flight and made it to Sitka. All together it took me 36 hours to get there! Did I mention how much I love standby??

 At least there was a pretty view in the Ketchikan airport. 

My first whole day in Sitka was Andi's (another of Ellen's friends from home) last day so we had a lot planned.  We started off the morning hiking at the end of the main road in Sitka. I will say Alaska is absolutely gorgeous!!!! And since my luck finally turned around, the weather was amazing the entire time I was there! In fact every local we ran into informed me that "it's never this nice here." :)

Ellen and Andi. 

 Me and Ellen. I stole this off her camera. :]

At the end of the road. 

After grabbing some lunch we met up with Ellen's friend Jasmine and went sea kayaking. Now I've been in my share of kayaks, but only in lakes and not oceans on a semi-windy day. Besides my rudder giving in on me half way through, I successfully made it without any problems. Poor Andi ended up tipping her kayak, but since Jasmine was a pro, all was well! Also I was super excited to get to take my GoPro out on it's first official run! I'm soo excited for all the things I'll be able to do with this camera!

 Me in my kayak. Courtesy of Ellen.

 Me and Andi in the kayaks. Again courtesy of Ellen.

The next day we decided to go on a bit longer of a hike. Our goal was to hike to and around Beaver Lake and then come back. Since there was at least 8 inches of snowfall just 2 days before not a whole lot of people had been on the trail. We successfully made it to the lake and continued to follow the path that someone before us had used. Suddenly we found ourselves hiking on the tops of trees and stepping into super deep snow. One step and you're on top of the snow the next your leg is completely submerged. As we contemplated how the hiker before us had managed, we realized that the tracks we were following were quite large. In fact they were snowshoes. After struggling for a bit more, we decided to go back the way we came. All in all it was a wonderful adventure. :]

I stole this from Ellen.

The only way to get down a steep, snowy path. On hands and legs! Stole from Ellen too.

 Beaver Lake.

After the hike we grabbed lunch and walked around downtown. Fun fact of the day: Did you know that Sitka was the first city in Alaska? It's actually where possession of the territory was handed over from Russia.  

For my last day (well half day) in Alaska, we slept in and then took a walk through Totem park.  

Sitka.

That afternoon I headed out for Reno. Thankfully this time I made all my flights! I'll post about that part of my trip later!! Also to come is the accompanying video to this post! 

MN to NV.

A year later and I finally have finished the video from our trip from Minnesota to Reno, Nevada! Can you tell I didn't want to work on my chemistry! Ha! Hope you enjoy!




MN to NV from Lindsey Mittendorf on Vimeo.