December 18, 2009

Day 3

It is about 2 am and I SHOULD be sleeping, but just got back from my inaugural visit to Iguana Rock – the San Cristobal nightclub that I have managed to miss on all prior visits.

Today was an interesting example of the Rolling Stones’ classic…. “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need” I also need to send out an island-wide mea culpa to my San Cristobal companeros… the running joke is that Ecuadorian time is always an hour behind Gringo time. So Galapagaean time is 2 hours behind Gringo time, and thus the Americans have a good laugh at their expense. HOWEVER… it seems that the Dutch have taken Galapagaean time to a whole ‘nother level – an appointment at 7:30am turned out to be around 3pm! So a big Lo Siento to all my amigos in San Cristobal – sorry to get you up early and make you work through lunch, but we were hungry and tired right there with you!

Everyone showed up dressed and ready to impress at 7:30am, and started off at a nice, but abnormally slow pace. After we heard that the Dutch filmmakers took an hour lunch break, we said screw it and started surgerizing away. When they DID show up, they took RH hostage for a few hours to run around the island looking for “difficult” people resisting sterilizing their pets. Good luck with that. They did bring us a pure-bred Husky and a pregnant lab mix, but didn’t even stay to film the surgery! So the wasted film opportunity turned out in favor of our 3 visiting veterianarias, P, P and R, as we had ample time to spare, and B was able to teach them some awesome surgery stuff. Each one had a pretty interesting, difficult surgery (3 big dog spays) so it was awesome learning and hands on experience. By the time everything was said and done, it was a ridiculously long day, and we could have been done by 3pm, but it worked out the way it was supposed to, and we finished around 5. We actually pushed 2 surgeries off until tomorrow, just because it was so late and it would have been another hour and a half to finish 2 dog spays.

After a MUCH NEEDED shower, EC, B and I had a great dinner at Miconia, and I stuffed myself with almost an entire pizza. Island time being what it is, we were supposed to meet up with the CIMEI people at 8 (I think?) but we were VERY late, and they had almost bailed on us. Again, it all seemed to work out, and after B bought everyone a round of drinks, I think they forgot about our tardiness ;-) We had the whole club to ourselves, and thus, made complete fools of ourselves on the dance floor. There were MANY photos taken (and apparently videos too) that will probably be destroyed due to inappropriate content ;-) but an awesome time was had by all. EC leaves early tomorrow :-( so we will be up early, but it was a great night and an interesting campaign. 3 days of surgery, 31 spays/neuters (18 today!), a handful of poison cases, and one hit by car surgery. Good surgeries, good learning experiences for the vets and great team work by all.

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