It is Sunday, and it is the Lenten season. Easter is a few weeks away and I haven’t found a church yet for service. I’d better get on it! Of course, I’m mostly hanging out with scientists and young students or volunteers (Do they go to church?). I’ll ask Paola.
I found out last night during my ‘nature’s call’ that we don’t have water again. And that the fan was left on all last night, which was probably a good thing. The humidity is very high and it is warm. The bed sheets last night as I covered up felt like they had been just washed and put on the bed. It’s that moist. And I found out that my computer never shut down! I opened the screen and shut it down. I looked at my watch with my flash light, it was 4:15 AM!
I remember just a little bit of my dream. I was sleeping here in this bed, but I awoke in a brightly lit, white tiled room. No bed, no nothin’. The white exit door had a little door in it at chest height. A voice called into me and I replied. I’m not sure if I was speaking English, and I’m not sure whose voice it was, but in my dream it was a very real place, not dreamlike at all. I was pretty scared and I thought that if I go to sleep again, I will wake up in my dorm room. I must say that when I awoke at 6:30 AM, I was totally relieved to be in my dorm room in the Galapagos. Welcome to my wine enhanced nightmare! (Of course, it could have been the food I ate!!)
I dress and walk to the bathroom. No water still. Not having water is really frustrating! I walk to the Library get my remaining two jugs of dehumidifier water, and bring them to the women’s bathroom. I wash my face and hands and use up one gallon. I leave the other water for anyone else to use. In a few hours, I will get another gallon from emptying the dehumidifier again.
At least I have a clean face and hands. I decide to eat breakfast. It being Sunday, I have cereal. The kitchen had another flood last night but it was from the rain last night pouring under the screen door. The kitchen leaves a lot to be desired, to put it mildly. From my room I bring the milk I bought yesterday, cereal, raisins, water, spoon, and my red plastic glass. In the kitchen, I get a bowl and my juice from the fridge. This will be a feast! I prep at the big table and stand and eat. And, so do the mosquitoes! I slap and kill 3 or 4 on my legs and ankles before I can finish my cereal and get the heck out this place! Mari always puts on insect repellant to go into the kitchen. Maybe she is right.
I go back to my room, make my bed, and fire up the laptop to charge the battery. I write this part of today’s entry. As I write, nature calls again, and this time, it’s more like going to the outhouse, esp. because there is no water to flush with. I take it upon myself to use up the whole gallon of dehumidifier water to fill the toilet tank and flush it as best as can be accomplished. Not very pretty. But now that I have figured out that there is hot water in the showers, I can wash my hands in hot water, and that is great!
Now I think that I will write about stuff that I have observed, but so far haven’t written about. The birds. There is great bird life around the dorm and even without a rooster, one awakens to the sound of chirping, twitters and songs. The Yellow Warbler has by far the sweetest melody. The LGBs (Little Gray Birds, as my father in law did, and my husband now, calls them) are everywhere. Of course, these are Darwin’s Finches, mostly the Small Ground, Small Tree, and Warbler Finch. There are many Galápagos Mockingbirds, too. I have seen Smooth-billed Anis fighting in the shrubs out the back window of the dorm. I have even seen a Yellow-crowned Night Heron wandering around outside the lighted kitchen, eating Large Painted Locusts as they bang themselves against the screen door, are stunned and repelled, then eaten!
I wish that there were more of them eating the locusts. There are usually 4 or 5 locusts hopping and jumping around in the kitchen at night. If the outside or even inside light is on, they are right there under the illumination. If you open the door to in or out, then they jump in. You could spent an evening of just catching the ones in the kitchen and trying to get them back outside, just as another one will hop in and you are at it again. Trust me, I know this.
Around the dorm, there are lizards and an occasional gecko. The geckos in Puerto Ayora are transplants from Guayaquil (Phyllodactylus reissi). As I’ve written before, they are very cute! The lizards all scamper all over the place. You can be walking along and they are so well camouflaged that they can startle you! Those little imps! Sometimes I will see one with a shortened tail, sometimes I will see one where the tail has regenerated, but the color is more monotone. Fascinating little creatures.
The touristas. I probably have mentioned that my dorm is not very far from the Giant Tortoise pens. The Charles Darwin Research Station, and this area in particular, is on every cruise itinerary as a port of call. Everyone wants to see those big turtles and Lonesome George. Somehow the touristas think that they are alone and there is no one but themselves to chatter on with. These people amaze me. Hollering back and forth to one another at 7 AM on the path. Their noise usually wakes me up, if I am not up already.
I blog until it is lunch time. Then I bike into town for a meal at the kioskos. The soup is always hot, the meal nothing special, but it is good enough, for $3.50. Funny how during the week, I have dessert at lunch every day. Here there is no dessert, and I miss it!
I take my sweet time coming back to through town and remember to call my Mom. I speak to her at the Convalescent Hospital, now that she will answer the phone. I say, Hello Mother, this is your daughter. She can’t believe it, and says No it’s not. I say Yes it is, and we have a nice conversation.
She tells me she is doing fine, getting better all the time. I know this as everyone who sees her emails me. But I am happy to hear her voice, just as she must be to hear mine. I leave the phone booth happy and glad that I called.
I bike the rest of the way to the dorm on a contented high. Just plain old glad to have done something so simple as a phone call.
When I get back to the room, I tell Mari that I got to talk to my Mom and she sounded good and she is getting stronger every day and will be out of the hospital in two or three weeks. Amazing.
I play my Rise of Atlantis computer game until dinner. Which, of course, is cereal again. I read until lights out.
