As you know, we spent a month living and volunteering on the galapagos islands. It was a really interesting experience, and we learned a ton, about natural selection, conservation living and work, and how to chop mora (blackberries)! We lived in the cloudforest zone of the islands (no, I didn’t know that they had one either), and our best gear was protective. What was it?
- Dry bags. These were AWESOME! Even though we were in the super-humid cloud forest for a month, the dry bags kept mold and mildew from piling up on our clothing and gear. If you spend more than a week in a rainforest, bring dry bags to store all your stuff.
We each brought two dry bags with us on the trip (GraniteGear AirVent Reduction DryBlocs that we bought at REI), and picked up one more each in Quito. They held our winter clothes, our summer clothes that we weren’t wearing at Jatun Sacha, and our reserve meds and toiletries.
- Travel hats (by Tilley and Columbia). We used these every day in the cloudforest. They were great to keep the bugs and the rain off of our heads, and to provide a support for our facenets when we wore them (which was almost every day for the final two weeks). When we weren’t at the station, they were great protection from the sun!
- Bugspray.We cannot say enough about this. We put it on 5 or 6 times per day:
- In the morning before we got dressed
- Right before the morning work started (8am)
- At our juice break (10am)
- On our way to lunch (12pm)
- Right before afternoon work (2pm)
- After showering (afternoon, when work was done) (4:30pm)
If we missed an area, it was really bad (e.g., on Monday of the last week, stef didn’t cover her wrists, and got about 15 bites in the morning work session). Needless to say, everyone at Jatun Sacha loved OFF and DEET.
So that’s what helped us most in the galapagos. We were a bit surprised, but it worked out really well!
