Wednesday in the Galapagos

Ecuador Galapagos BlogSpot Wednesday March 30, 2011

Blue and Ginny wanted to stay around the house today, we are all pretty fried by the sun. I wanted to go on another day tour, so I ate a quick breakfast and zipped down to town to see if I could catch a trip to Isabella Island. Colleen decided to join me and we got on a trip that was leaving in 20 minutes!

This trip was about 2 1/2 hours on another boat taxi. Our guide was a young man named Javier. He spoke excellent English, but tended to tell a lot of info in Spanish, then very little in English. This tour ended up being much more hurried, and less relaxing. But we still had a good time.

The marina at the Island is very shallow, so once we docked, we loaded onto small taxi boats to tour the area. We saw some penguins and boobies. Then we went over to a lava rock area and took a short walk to see the “iguana kindergarten” and some sharks! The juvenile iguanas live in the lava rocks here where they can find food in the holes and hide from danger.

The “white tipped sharks” hang out in this channel. These reef sharks feed mainly at night, in total darkness. The eat reef fish which they detect using electromagnetic pulses. Unlike most other sharks, the white tip sharks sleep during the day, living on the ocean floor, alongside rocks or in caves. Luckily, we were able to see many of them cruising through the area where we could see them. We also got to see some sea turtles in the distance.

We did a short snorkel swim. There was a sea lion with us. They are sure funny characters! I got one good photo of him and two that were not good (one of his neck and one of his tail end) but I did not erase the bad photos because it still shows that I was in the water with him!. The pretty little cove is called La Calera. We went back to the mainland to board the taxi bus and went to a restaurant for lunch. We had a nice chicken soup and bread, then fish, rice and salad. This time I knew it was fish (though I did take a taste—very “fishy”) and gave that to Colleen. She enjoyed it immensely. Then we had some time to enjoy another beach.

I went for a short swim then went to the lava rocks to get more baby iguana pictures. From a distance I could see little round protrusions on the tops of the lava rock…I thought they were the heads of the baby iguanas (but was sure I was being fooled) but they really were iguanas! Hundreds (thousands?) of them! There is a protected nesting area in the grasses close by, but the youngsters spend most of their time on the rocks. I got some really good photos. (Thanks again, Gary, the camera is awesome!).

Colleen and I bought some ice cream then off to the next stop. We got to see some wild flamingos in their lagoon. They were a long distance away, but it was neat to see them in the wild. (I grew up seeing them as the first exhibit at the San Diego Zoo!). The last stop was a tortoise breeding facility. Got to see all different ages, sizes and varieties of the Galapagos tortoises. We even saw some youngsters (about 5 years old) play fighting! They bite at each other then pull their heads into their shells and bash shells! Rather comical to watch.

Then it was time for the long boat ride back to Santa Cruz Island. I was sure ready for a shower and change of clothes!

Our tentative plan with Midene and Michael was to catch the 7am boat taxi to San Cristobal and they would meet us at 9am (yep, another two hour boat ride!) and we would spend the day with them. Well, I caught up with my tour agent and there is only normally ONE boat taxi each day… at 2pm!!! The only return is at 7am! BUT then next day they were having a special taxi at 10am. Round trip ticket $50. Hmmmmm, so we would have to stay the night, (where??, but he gave us a hotel name and another $25 per person) and there was no way to get in touch with Midene. Ho Hum, what to do. I was willing to go by myself, but was not too thrilled to be there alone if I was not able to catch up with Midene. Ginny was game to go along. So we decided to bite the bullet and head out in the am. Heck, just another adventure!!
After cleaning up, we had another nice dinner then back home to pack for our little over nighter.