Wednesday 30th October
By Team #WeTwo
The last early morning of the trip and what a way to end it with a cheesy croissant with eggs and ham and a side of fruit for breakfast. The team was ready to go for their last day packed with all sorts of adventures.
The team left the hotel for the highlands to meet Ruby and Ibrahi from Jocotoco Foundation. Here they specialise in the conservation of Galapagos petrel birds, removing invasive guava, planting endemic ferns and controlling the population of rats. The Los Petreles Reserve spanned over 123 hectares and is home to 141 nests with a total of 7 colonies. Here the volunteers install cameras to monitor the bird activity across their nests, they contain motion sensors which allows them to record up to 15 seconds of footage once activated.
The team was also fascinated to learn about the processes in place to decrease the rat population, which eat the birds eggs. They do this with rat traps containing poison being placed all around the reserve. Within these traps they aim to switch the types of slow acting poison used in order for it to remain as effective as possible so they don’t work up a resistance. The poison has shown to be effective so far with there being a 65% decrease in the rat population.
Amari shows the team a photo of a nesting petrel. Picture: Phoebe Smith
Ruby and Ibrahi then led the team further down into the reserve to collect ferns to be carried back up and replanted for their vertical garden. Jocotoco aim to plant the ferns early next year and the team eagerly awaits the photos of their hard work.
With the team being the first visitors from the UK and one of the first from around the world, excluding international volunteers, they enjoyed asking questions to both Ibrahi and Ruby about their day-to-day routine. The team were split between preferring Ibrahi’s office day and Ruby’s day in the reserve. The team then thanked Ruby and Ibrahi for inviting them to learn more about the importance of conservation and the work they do and then we all left the highlands for lunch at one of the local restaurants.
With Jessica’s dad Jose-Luis at his bar made out of recycled glass bottles. Picture: Dwayne Fields
On our way back our guide, Jessica, surprised us with a visit to her fathers amazing house. The first thing that caught our attention was the life boat positioned in a tree acting as a treehouse. We later found this was once advertised on AirBnB and open to the public as it had a fully functioning bed, bath and toilet. The team then climbed down into the roots of a 300 year old kapok (known in the UK silk or cotton) tree which was 7.5 metres wide and had been converted into a basement bunker that the team thoroughly enjoyed exploring.
The team was then invited into the main building where we were amazed to see the walls were made entirely of concrete and over 27,000 recycled beer bottles cemented into the wall which we were told took 6 months to collect and then 6 months to construct.
Jessica and her dad with their family sculpture that inspired us all. Picture: Iyla Majeed
Josè Luis, Jessica’s father, then took us over to a sculpture he had built inspired by his family. He’d secured rocks on top of a main boulder, each one represented a member of his family and he described the importance of balancing between nature and people and how the family sculpture was a good example of people’s differences.
Jessica said when speaking about the sculpture “every rock is different, we are all different, in order to stay balanced we need to stay together”.
As a team we felt this was something each and every one of us could take from this entire trip and something society would benefit from practicing.