Kick off to Spring Break: Floreana

Weather: Sunny and in the 80s

And so Spring break begins! This morning I was up at 6am getting ready for my island hopping adventure. After having a scrambled egg and some grilled cheese for breakfast, I headed to the pier for 7am to have my backpack checked. We all boarded a water taxi to get to our boat that would take us to Floreana at 7:30am. The water taxis are pretty unstable, so when people get in one person sits on one side of the boat, and then the next person to get on sits on the opposite side. We split into two groups of 14 people for the trip. If we didn’t split, not all of us could fit in the water taxis without making two trips for a single boat. When our taxi guy piled all our luggage into the front of the boat I swear the taxi tilted downwards due to the weight. It was quite frightening but we all made it safely to our boat for the day.

The ride to Floreana was pretty relaxing, Kayelyn ended up getting sick but afterwards she felt great. The total trip to get there took 2 hours and the sea was pretty calm. Upon arrival, the water was a clear turquoise blue. There were no plastic bottles floating in the water, and no boats on moorings. It was more desolate than I imagined however, I am comparing it with San Cristobal that is home to nearly 8,000 people. Floreana has less than 200 inhabitants, and most of their jobs include maintaining parts of the island or running the tourism there. The island is actually an extension of San Cristobal in that the islands share the same mayor.

Our captain moored the boat in place and a water taxi came to meet us to take us to shore. We had our bags checked once more; they do this to ensure we are not bringing anything on or off the islands that doesn’t belong. Soon after all of our bags were checked over, we were on our way to our first stop: the highlands. All the roads on Floreana are dirt and the houses are pretty spread out. The houses were actually better constructed than I was imagining. I’d say construction wise they were equivalent to San Cristobal.

After a 20-25 minute drive, we reached the highlands and began our hike. We hiked through a tortoise reserve and saw a bunch of tortoises from all different age groups. The ones we saw were bred and introduced back onto Floreana. So technically they were wild since there is no galapaguera on Floreana. Some of the tortoises we saw were hybrids, and most of them were sent to Floreana from San Cristobal's Galapaguera, since the endemic tortoises on Floreana have been wiped out. After the tortoises, we got to see Floreana’s source of fresh water through a chain linked fence, and then we continued hiking to some caves that were apparently made by the pirates that came to Floreana many years ago. The views were really pretty all along the hike and after an hour or so, we headed back to the trailhead and hopped back on the chiva to head to lunch.

Lunch was at what I believe to be maybe 1 of the 3 restaurants on the island. The vegetarian option was an omelet with onions in it, lima beans, carrots and then they brought out more beans and rice. It was a good lunch and dessert was a slice of watermelon. We headed to Black Beach (that’s what our guide called it, the sand is all black so it would make sense) after lunch for a snorkel. This marked our last activity before we had to board our boat again and head to Isabela. We took off our sandals halfway down the beach, and then ran as fast as we could to the water line because your feet would burn on the black sand. It was pretty intense and funny at the same time. Visibility wasn’t the best, but I saw lots of fish (which I still think is really cool), a sea turtle swimming in the distance, and a few leatherback turtles resting at the bottom of the seafloor. I headed back to shore after about 35-40 minutes in the water. As I approached the beach I saw something move so I looked over and there was a HUGE spotted eagle ray gliding right next to me. I got some shots on the GoPro and had to head in. It was an amazing sight, I’ve seen them under the lights on the malecon but they’re 10x more majestic when they’re swimming next to you.

We headed back to board the water taxi and we saw two penguins swimming about! Nicola and Audrey had seen two swim by them while they were snorkeling so I was hoping to get a glimpse of them

before we had to leave. Lucky for me, I saw them but they were gone by the time I could get my camera. They were absolutely adorable, and all of us were talking about how if we could bring back an animal here it’d have to be penguins. For me, it’d definitely be between a penguin and a blue footed booby. Tough choice.

Once back on board our boat, we headed for Isabela! The ride to Isabela was supposed to be very choppy and it could’ve taken up to three hours. However, it was very calm and we made it in an hour and forty five minutes. It was fabulous and the first views we got of Isabela were gorgeous. There were a lot of boats and sailboats in port. The water was the same turquoise blue as it was in Floreana. There were mangrove forests and lava fields right where we stopped. There was a guy scrubbing the side of his boat, this answered so many questions for me. I have never seen anyone cleaning boats and I wondered what they did to clean them! The water taxi came and got us to bring us to shore. There was no luggage check but there was a K9 that sniffed our bags. He got distracted when he saw a neck pillow of one of our chaperones, he jumped up and grabbed it. He was quickly corrected and got on with sniffing our bags. It was pretty funny since our chaperone was left with a slobbery pillow.

We headed to Hotel Tintoreras around 5pm, and holy cow we were in heaven. The luxury status was equivalent to staying at a house in Quito. It just goes to show that I’ve adjusted here and my level of luxury is now way lower than it ever was before (not that I’ve ever been materialistic). Nicola and I scored a double, immediately turned the AC on, took showers, and laid in bed til we had to meet for dinner at 7pm.

Dinner was at Shawarma Restaurant and we had shawarma for dinner! I got a vegetarian shawarma which had lettuce, tomato, cucumber, falafel, and garlic sauce all in a pita wrap. It was absolutely incredible and dessert was banana bread. By the time dinner ended it was 8:30 and our day tomorrow starts at 6am before a 10 mile volcano hike. People were thinking about going out and exploring the town a bit, but the early morning changed our minds. Overall, it was a great first day to our island hopping adventure. I’m looking forward to exploring Isabela more over the next two days!