Diary from the Galápagos, Week 2

Story and photos by Jein Park

For our second week, we wrapped up mapping on San Cristobal Island and started diving into our individual research projects. It was a busy week filled with a lot of visitors including the University of Chicago’s Sabina Shaikh, Director of Program on the Global Environment; Alison Anastasio, Lecturer in Environmental and Urban Studies; and Luis Bettencourt, Director of the Mansueto Institute of Urban Innovation.

On Sunday we walked to La Loberia, a beach about 2 miles away from the hotel where we were staying. We watched some of the biggest waves of our lives crash against lava rocks and enjoyed the glimmering sunset against the seashore.

Street food vendors often opened up shop around 4 pm, and we would frequently purchase empanadas after our work day ended at 5pm. Then, we usually stopped by our hostel to drop things off, then look for dinner. We rarely made plans and instead wandered and stopped into random places that might look good.

On this particular evening, I went around to different tour agencies with Andrew from the University of Melbourne and Freddie from Universidad San Francisco de Quito. We wanted to find the best deal for a 360-tour of San Cristobal we were planning for Saturday.

Because so many UChicago faculty visitors came to the Galápagos to support us, there were quite a few nights we were treated to dinner! We’ve been treated to Midori, an upscale Japanese restaurant, a couple times. For this evening, we were lucky enough to have Luis, Sabina, and Alison join us.

The day after, we took a taxi to map El Progresso, a town more inland in San Cristobal. We basically became DIY Google StreetView cars for a day. Here’s a picture of Dani Zünd, Mansueto Institute’s postdoctoral fellow, securing one of our GoPro cameras on the back of the taxi.

On this trip to El Progresso, we also stopped by El Junco, which is a crater lake in the highlands of San Cristobal.

We also got to see the iconic Galápagos tortoises!

There’s really limited WiFi and weak data signals on the Islands, so there’s usually two things to do at night: watch ball or play ball. On this night, we opted to play soccer with the other Ecuadorian and Australian students. The Ecuadorians were way too good for the rest of the international students, unsurprisingly.

On Friday, we gathered with the entire architecture studio where each student gave brief progress reports on their work. The Ecuadorian and Australian students presented their rough draft designs of what an “indigenous” architectural style on the Galápagos might look like, while the UChicago students also presented on the individual research we had conducted so far. Here’s a group picture of everyone!

Then I got to cap off week 2 with a perfect sunset in Playa Mann, where our “home base” was located.

Jein Park is an undergraduate research assistant at the University of Chicago studying Public Policy and Sociology (2020). This is her take on Week 2of the second annual Galápagos Urbanization & Sustainable Development study, which explored evolution of the built environment and resource consumption on the Galápagos Islands. The 6-week research study is led jointly by the University of Chicago’s Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation and the Program on the Global Environment (PGE). Learn more here.