Galapagos Islands - Isla Isabela

Oh hi! After booking our trip to Isabela all we had to do was catch the boat at the harbour on Santa Cruz. We rocked up with plenty of time and the good advice from the nice lady at Moonrise travel...'sit at the back of the boat!' We took her seriously and did so, only to find ourselves surrounded by three American families. With all of us wedged in on bench seats in what amounted to barely more than a speed boat with two massive outboard engines. Yikes, it was hardly believeable that we were going to make an open sea crossing of about three hours in this small boat!

We did though. At incredible speeds for the size of the swell that was around us. Looking out of the back of the boat we left a huge, huge wake behind us. Frequently the boat slammed into the waves, making it difficult to hold on as we were jolted against the bench seat. The Lonely Planet described it as 'a crossing some may find terrifying'. It was easy to see how someone might. Neither of us did feel terrified or seasick, which was great. However immediately one of the teenagers was puking into multiple bags and eventually was moved to the back of the boat where she nearly fell in (naturally the boat didn't slow down!)

One of the American dads felt the need to continually swig Rum from a bottle, whilst drinking beer, shouting and gesturing wildly (he was excited). This became a problem when he moved for the third time and sat next to me. I felt sure that he was going to elbow me in the face each time he waved his arms in the air and cheered. I asked him not to and he eventually moved again which involved getting up and hanging onto the other passengers as he made his way to the back of the boat to swig more rum and shout at the girl being sick. It was at this point that we both had an awful feeling that we had made a hideous mistake by taking this trip...what if these were the people that we had to spend our whole time with!!!? I already wanted to push them overboard.

The distance of the journey was made more visible as we approached some small islands...it seemed to take forever for them to pass even though we were flying along. Randomly another boat doing the same trip would appear and our driver, seeing this would then try to speed up even more to race them. This scenario was in progress when another of the teenagers needed the loo. He made his way to the front of the boat into the luggage cabin toilet compartment that. The boat had to be slowed for this, that was when we really got a good feel for how much bigger the swell seemed if you weren't moving. It was fucking insane. Drunk dad then needed the loo as well making our time idling in the waves much longer leading to one of the mums puking into multiple bags next to us. Ideal.

But hey, eventually we made it, and I managed not to kill any of them. I really wish that we had taken some pics of them and the wake of the boat. Nevermind.

We got taken to our hotel and had a lovely room with a queen size bed and en suite which we appreciated even more because we thought that we would be in a dorm room! We met the rest of the group (sans American family, phew!) in the hotel garden, then went for a walk through Puerto Villamil with our guide Dario. He had his impression of Borat off down to a tee! He even ended sentences with 'no, a, aha?' This we found hilarious, but managed to keep ourselves in check. It was made even more funny when we came to the lake where we were going to see flamingo's. We stood on the viewing platform and in the middle of the lake was one, solitary flamingo. It was so funny. We had a nice walk around the sleepy rural town, the main settlement on Isabela . The roads were covered with wind blown sand and it wasn't anything like as commercial or developed as Santa Cruz. We really liked it. We ended the evening with a lovely meal at the hotel and retired to our room to watch chod on cable TV.

The next moring we had breakfast and chatted to some of our group, laughing about how Dario described todays activity of horseriding up the volcano as 'dangerous, many accident when horse slips'. Oh how we laughed.

Here we are after short distance in a mini bus at the foot of the volcano. We were accompanied on the journey by some American teenagers who said 'like' and 'really' literally after every other word. We would have been staring at them open mouthed if they hadn't been sooo American and insisted in talking to us. They were going to walk up the volcano and were wearing flipflops and beachwear. It seemed to be a shock for them when we got out of the minibus at altitude into wet, thick fog. We found this very amusing! LOL.


We set off on the trail up hill and climbed for some distance into fog before this thankfully cleared and we saw the colossal crater of Sierra Negra. It is the second largest crater in the world and is nearly 10km in diametre.


Wiji´s horse wass lovely and so was mine. Other people in the group weren't so nice and wanted to run at or bite the other horses.


As we trotted on we kept getting glimpses of the crater through the fog.






Wiji and Dario.




Looking at part of the crater to our left.


Looking across Isabela to our right.


This was where we stopped, dismounted and left the horses to graze. It was here that we bumped into Lobo and his wife who had camped up here overnight.


The soap tree, so called because the fruit can be used like soap. In the tree is a tiny flycatcher.


Not spotted very often so far, a cactus in flower.


Looking towards the north of Isabela, with some lava in the foreground.


We left the crater of Sierra Negra behind us and started walking on the old lava flow of Volcan Chico. The volcanic landscape stretched out before us for miles.


A lava tunnel exposed.


It was instantly hotter and the sun beat down and was reflected back up from the lava.


I found the landscape hostile, arid and quite horrific.


Steam rising from a volcanic fumarole. We couldn't get near the edge or see how deep this crater was, but we followed the path around it.


Another smaller gaping hole with the colours of the metal oxides more visible.


Wiji leant over to get a snap of this next furmarole. I could't look!


This shot was looking across to Isla Fernandina and Volcan La Cumbre.


And to the North of the immensely vast Isabela, the largest and youngest of the Galapagos Islands. It is essentially 5 large volcanos, strewn together.


This is where I could go no further, and Dario tried to pursued me that the edge wasn't very high. Oh yeah? Wiji went on to a vantage point where Dario wanted us to eat our lunch. To me this seemed insane. Why would we want to sit in this baking environment and have a picnic. I love this photo though. I decided to have my lunch next to one of the furmaroles pictured earlier. Madness.


We then made our way back across the trail to the horses. My horse decided to run away and had to be caught by the man looking after them. I didn't really blame it.


We were all a bit saddle sore by this point and the ride, now being down hill and slippery, was a bit of a concern. Dario made hissing noises behind the horses who then started to gallop off in a group...is it just me or was that quite a dangerous thing to do with inexperienced riders?! I asked him not to do that again, thanks. He didn't. The horses were obviously used to these conditions, but it was easy to see how they could fall over. Both our horses were very responsive and we tried to lead them off the muddiest paths that Dario kept hurding everyone onto. When we arrived back at the minibus we were both bent over at the knees...apparently our stirrups were too short for our legs...we had been riding in a horseracing jockey stylee. Lol. We were just glad that the horses didn't crush us!

We met up again with the American teenagers who were covered in mud up to their thighs. They had muddy platforms stuck to their flipflops...they seemed a bit quieter now. Lol. Off we headed in the minibus smelling of soggy horse and fogging the windows up as we trundled through the wet single track lanes down from the volcano Sierra Negra. The lane was lined with large groups of Datura trees in flower. These looked spectacular...I had never seen so many!

We got out for a quick look around the Isabela division of the Charles Darwin Research Station giant tortoise repatriation programme. Just before we went in I chased a black Carpenter bee around the reception garden area. They are so fast. I had tried to get a piccy of one loads of times before, but finally succeded. This is it!


We also spied some colourful Lava Lizards basking on some rocks.


The Cerro Palma Giant Tortoises were on the verge of extinction after they were hunted for meat. In 1994 scientists took blood samples from various species to study their genetic variations. They found that the Cerro Palmo Giant Tortoise was different from the others. At the time they had four males and two females in captivity, so they collected some more females and started a sucessful breeding programme. Here's some of the offspring mainly crashed out asleep in the sun.


'On Isabela each volcano has a different race of Giant Tortoise'. Here are the five main volcanos.


We had a very quick wander around the centre and saw some very old Giant Tortoises tucking into some cactus paddles and generally taking it easy before we were off again in the minibus back to the hotel to get changed for the snorkelling at Bahia Villamil. We were super excited because we were eagerly awaiting the chance of seeing some Penguins!!! We were fitted up with some shoddy snorkle gear then off went in a lancha.

Here is our first glimpse of some penguins!


Oh god yeah...look at him swim. It was brilliant!


A Grey Blue Heron stationed like a standing stone on the lava.


We can see those Penguins! Our boats all then headed off to the nature trail in the opposite direction...ooooh we hoped they would still be around later!


We landed at the trail and immediately saw hoards of Marine Iguana's sunbathing on top of one another.


The landscape was so different to the other islands we had visited. The Marine Iguanas here seemed so suited to this volcanic landscape.


'Shark Roasting Area?'. Ok. This is where White Tipped Reef Sharks are sometimes seen in the shallows. We didn't see any up close but saw a fin out in the water as one swam away.


The trail was quite small and we missed some of it out because a large Sealion was blocking the way...but we got the general impression. Excitedly we headed back to the boat to go snorkelling. In reality they wanted us to snorkle in a small inlet, but we hopped out and swam around the other side to try to get a good look at those much sought after Penguins.

Here they are chilling on the rocks, totally disinterested. It was all well worth it!


We swam around the shore line to get these shots from the water.


It was quite overcast so the others in the group were not as enthusiastic to get in. As a result it was quieter for us to view the Penguins.




We swam around the mangrove enclosed bay and tried to look for some Penguin's in the water. Wiji spotted some that we tried to follow, but they were super quick, ducking down and swimming off below the surface.

We swam about searching for them whilst cursing our shonkey snorkle masks and found some cornering a shoal of fish! They were incredibly hard to photograph and we were soon accompanied by a Sealion who wanted to play with us.


When we saw them wizzing around underwater it was spectacular!


Flapping their wins they belted about with little effort in their rubber dinner jackets.


The Sealion half heartedly wanted to get in on the fish cornering action.


Here is a film I managed to take as the Penguins corner the fish in a depression in the seabed. At the end of it are some different fish swimming in the rocky cracked seabed.


After actually seeing the Penguins fishing up close we were elated! It was what we had hoped for and were so lucky we felt as there were so few of them about! We headed back to the rocks to get one last look at the group there.

Swimming around the mangrove roots with the tiny fishes.






Brilliant!


The return journey early the next morning to Santa Cruz wasn't quite as horrific as the one on the way over. We were accompanied by Barbara and her partner (whose name I can't remember...sorry!), a really friendly German couple who had made the various excursions a lot of fun. Also with us was Monica who's company we enjoyed for our last couple of days on the Galapagos. None of us actually spoke during the endless crashing of the boat on the swell on the way back, but everyone seemed to have recovered by the evening (just about anyway), and it was all worthwhile to see those Penguinaunins!