The Swedish Library decides when we will leave
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Sat 11 May 2013 03:25
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So I promised yesterday to tell you about Andreas
being bitten by a turtle.
We where at a breeding farm with 2000 turtles and
the kids decided to feed some small turtles.
The turtles went bananas, climbing on top of each
other to get the leaves offered.
Suddenly Andreas was not watching one coming from
the side that apparantly thought Andreas hand was eatable.
Andreas screamed and it was a nasty little
bite.
Now Ellinor keeps it clean.
After the turtle farm we actually saw big land
turtles in the "free" landscape. Amazing creatures that live for hundreds of
years.
We took the bikes towards something called the Wall
of Tears, a terrible landmark that I will come back to.
The biking along this stretch was astonishing,
turtles, iguanas, finches of different kinds, views of the forests that climb
the hills where the rain will fall (towards south). Mangrove forests in lagoons.
And on a stretch of about 8 kilometers we saw three cars. Thats it.
Very peaceful. The road was either covered of lava
gravel or sand, with our bikes we prefered the lava gravel.
Once we came to the wall of tears we could just
look at one of the few manmade monuments on this island. A huge wall of stones
piled on top of each other. This is a remain after Equador decided to make the
island a place to keep prisoners. There was some infrastructure left after the
US military who had a radar station during the second world war. To keep the
prisoners busy they had to pile stones to a huge wall. And this is probably the
most evidence on how it must feel to pile stones instead of building a
cathedral.
We are about the beginning of the 1950, and
the prisoners had a saying: On Isabela, strong men cry and the weak men
die.
Must have been hell, as it was turning afternoon
the heat in this place was added with mosquitos and small biting bugs. We could
just jump on the bikes and get away from there, thank god.
Yesterday some boats in the Swedish/Norwegian fleet
took off towards Les Gambier/Marquesas, their time was out. You are only allowed
to stay on Galapagos 20 days maximum. Today the last boat, Felice took
off.
Today we had our monday meeting (yes I know its
friday) and decided that we shall leave on thursday, weather
permitting.
The reason is that Erika and Ellinor borrow books
from the Swedish library (e-books), a necessity with Erika since she reads a
book a day when we sail.Now the libraries have rules and one of them is that
after a certain amount of books you may not borrow more.
Until a week later.
So to be able to upload a second batch before we
leave we have to stay til thursday.And this is the last resort with wifi as
far as we know, til we get to Tahiti... But we might be wrong.
We will of course have satellite as usual but that
is not for downloading books.
Before we leave we will celebrate Ellinors birthday
(tomorrow), and since she does not read the blog I can tell you readers I have a
surprise for her. She will meet an artist that lives here on the island and they
will paint together in his studio (that is only 150 meters from the landing dock
for the dinghies).
Andreas wants to repeat his succes by wrapping
himself up and be given to mom.
We have some more snorkeling to do (hopefully with
baby sharks etc), some walks to walk on some great places.
At nights we have looked at the BBC series about
Galapagos, given to us from Felice. Perfect match!
We have some maintanance to do and we are making
water as much as we can now to catch up with consumption.
I have worked on rigg details, the boom needed to
be checked and to do that mounted off the mast (it is heavy).
Spinnacker pole had to be repaired ans lubricated
in the mechanism etc.
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