Author: William Herzfeld | Major: History and Political Science | Semester: Fall 2024
We went to a tortoise sanctuary where they rehabilitate tortoises and breed baby tortoises to reintroduce to the island’s ecosystem.
My name is Hank Herzfeld, and I recently returned from a trip to the Galapagos Islands over Thanksgiving Break for this year’s Nation Model United Nations (NMUN) conference. I represented Portugal as one of the eleven students to attend the conference from the University of Arkansas. We had a great experience in Ecuador, and we participated in academic activities like the conference itself, a service day cleaning up waste around the island, and recreational activities like snorkeling at Kicker Rock and hiking a dormant volcano!
We spent the first day in Quito where we went to the Centro del Mundo (Center of the World) educational area and learned about Ecuador and the global cartographic significance of Quito. We saw some incredible cultural artifacts from Ecuador, but the most fun was definitely the chocolate! We had the opportunity to taste fresh cacao beans, try cacao paste, and learn about the chocolate-making process. That night the conference hosts, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, invited us for an opening ceremony and dinner with a complimentary chocolate tasting with the owner of one of Ecuador’s most popular chocolate brands. The next day we flew to the Galapagos Islands’ San Cristobal Island where we spent the rest of our time. The Galapagos Islands are predominantly nationally protected areas, but San Cristobal is one of the few communities on the islands.
The conference made up the next three days from eight o’clock to six o’clock, and all of the team’s hard work from the semester paid off at the end of the conference. Out of close to two-hundred participants, the University of Arkansas was awarded five of the twelve outstanding delegate awards, two of the outstanding position paper awards, and one of four outstanding delegation awards. We are the only school to have been recognized this highly, and many of our delegates, myself included, are first time Model UN participants.
When then conference was over, we spent Thanksgiving day cleaning up waste across the island. Our team was split in half on two sides of the highway. After we finished the day cleaning, we had picked up several hundred pounds of trash and debris from the side of the road, most of which was non-recyclable waste and plastic. We were treated to a Thanksgiving dinner that night, and we could finally celebrate our success that evening now that the conference was over. The next two days were spent around the island and snorkeling at Kicker Rock, a volcanic formation about ten miles from San Cristobal. We saw almost all of the endemic wildlife of the island including the tortoises, blue-footed boobies, iguanas, sea-lions, sea turtles, and crabs, and we also saw a rare tiger shark and hammerhead shark while on our snorkeling trip. It was an incredible experience to go to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, and I was incredibly fortunate for the opportunity to go. I would highly recommend to anyone considering study abroad to participate in an opportunity before graduating! There are options for everyone, from a two-week to a year-long experience.