12-30-11 GUAYAQUIL, ECUADOR: We’re back in this airport, our third visit in about a week, but it has Wi-Fi. We left the boat for a bus early this morning for our return to the airport on Baltra after getting up even earlier for breakfast. In the highlands of Santa Cruz, we were lead into a lava cave, twenty feet high and ten feet wide and mostly white from oxidation of the magnesium in the basalt. We went in about 200 feet, turned off the flashlights and experienced total darkness. The sides and roof are remarkably smooth and uniform.
Back in the daylight we went on to a highland farm, grasslands and forests, where the tortoises roam free. We saw a couple dozen, several occupying a shallow water hole. They were up to four feet long and three feet high and mostly stationary. I can see why the hare was over confident. After the tortoises, it was back on the bus to the ferry from Santa Cruz to Baltra. A hop, and on another bus to the airport for the usual pre-flight mazes. Hopefully home on schedule.
Lava tube forms when the outer part of a flow hardens, but the inner material continues to flow away leaving the hollow tube. The white coating is oxidized magnesium and the red-brown stuff is oxidized iron.
Glad to get out.
The highlands is much damper than the coast and, so, much greener.
Tortoise in the wild.
Swim period.
"Bye now. I'll be here when your great grand kids come by."
No comments:
Post a Comment