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GALAPAGOS!!! (Isabela Island)4 Mar 2008
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Blue footed boobies dive-bombing the water to catch fish (puerto Ayora, Santa...
There's the splash!
The main town on Isabela!!
Puerto Villamil, on Isabela, is very different to Puerto Ayora and Puerto Baquerizo Moreno: it's much smaller, and the streets are mostly covered with sand. A very long white sand beach stretches out of the town to one side towards the wetlands, and we stayed in a hostel near there for our first couple of nights. The town is very relaxed and peaceful, with few tourists (not many of the boats come out this way) and lots of large marine iguanas along the coast (they're larger on Isabela because of the abundance of food for them here). It's mating season at the moment, so there's lots of nodding, head-butting and nest building at their nesting sites, which are fascinating! We walked up through the wetlands, where there are nine trails to the beautiful beaches, lagoons, mangroves and tunnels there, to a lookout with a stunning view (and very welcome breeze!), and then to the 'wall of tears', one of the few sites that remind you of the sad human history of the islands. A particularly cruel penal colony was located here after the war, and building the wall with their bare hands was one of many pointless tasks that the prisoners completed. We also enjoyed going out the other side of the town, near the docks, to Concha Perla, a shallow inlet of the sea, where the sea lions played and the marine iguanas and lava herons sunned themselves. We made two amazing trips from Isabela. The first was to Los Tunels, with friends that we'd made there. On the way, we saw sea lions playing, and lots of snoozing turtles in the open sea. The tunnels are really hard to describe, and the photos only do them partial justice. The black volcanic rock forms arches and columns in a kind of other-worldly labyrinth, reflected in the crystal clear turquoise water where rays and huge turtles glide past amongst the fish. It's stunning. On the way back from there, we stopped at a bay to snorkel with the turtles: and there were LOTS of them, some very big, and some seemed curious about us and swum around us a few times before going on their way. Our second trip was to dive at Isla Tortuga. We were a bit nervous about the currents, and they were certainly a new experience(!), but diving with the sea lions and turtles, and seeing hammerhead sharks(!!!) as well as all the fishes definitely made it worthwhile! Our final day on Isabela was 'women's day' in Ecuador, so after watching the beautiful sunset on the beach, we joined all the locals at the basketball court (basketball is a big thing here) to watch live music and dance. We met our dive master there, and the guy who'd driven the boat for our dive (it was his birthday!), and made new friends, so a few hours before our 6am ferry back to Santa Cruz we were in Isabela's only (but very good) nightclub :)
