April 8th 2009 - Party time!

It was Louise Stahlschmidt’s birthday and so when a few of us were awake we went upstairs and sang to her over breakfast. Though it was again a workday (a bit weird now I have been working for nearly 5 years in an office to consider ‘working’ to be spending 5 hours on a Galapagos farm) and we were soil bagging again, my role mainly comprising of taking full bags over to the area they would be laid out in a wheelbarrow. It was actually pretty hard work in the heat and we bagged so much soil that I got to chop down a banana tree – in a week they will be ripe for eating!

This afternoon Mia, Christine and I went into towel and, amongst laundry and shopping, we went to the Church where the girls were volunteering. Here I got to meet Pepe. Pepe is a giant tortoise, the first I saw on the trip. He would be blip for the day if it wasn’t Louise’s birthday – and there will be a blip of tortoises at some point! I was very excited by Pepe though, he literally made my jaw drop and I could not smiling and taking pictures.

Back at the flats we started the party for Louise’s birthday. After a couple of games we ate the mishke mishke meal that Camilla and Helle had prepared before the others started arriving and we started on the ice cream and cake. We headed out to the Polo Bar which was proper cool – hammocks and had a total wooden shack feel to the place with a mini dance floor and a pole in the middle. We danced idiotically, laughed and drank. It was a great night at a cool bar celebrating a very cool lady’s birthday.