Isabela: First Full Day

Weather: Sunny, Hot, and 80

Isabela day one...WOW! Nicola and I were up at 5:45 and ready for breakfast by 6am. Breakfast was provided by the hotel and consisted of scrambled eggs, watermelon and banana that you could mix with granola and yogurt to make a fruit bowl. They served a really good croissant on the side as well. It was a healthy un-fried breakfast and I was over the moon. Tania has been pretty good about not giving me fried food, but Ive been having a lot of grilled cheeses so the change was nice.

We headed out around 7:30am on a bus to Sierra Negra Volcano. The crater of the volcano is the second largest in the world and it’s still active according to Genesis who is a chaperone and a guide on San Cristobal. It was about a 45 minute drive to get to the trailhead and the hike was 10 miles and took about four and a half hours to complete. It was pretty flat the whole way but the heat takes a lot of out of you. We stopped a few times on the way for pictures as the views were spectacular. There was a point towards the end of the hike (before we turned around to head back) where we could see the crater of Sierra Negra if we looked left, and Volcan Chico if we looked right. There was a group that hiked down to Volcan Chico but they went at a very fast pace with no breaks for pictures or water, I didn’t have my hiking boots, and I am still pretty congested. So, I stayed along the Sierra Trail and enjoyed the views while taking many pictures (some seen here). The hike was great and I am so happy we got to do it with IES because it was one of the things I was hoping to do during my time here in the Galápagos.

After the hike we headed to lunch, but my group was a little late because all of our guides and chaperones got into the other bus, and it left without letting us know. Our bus driver was waiting for an adult to hop on and after about 10 minutes of just sitting there we realized it was just our bus in the parking lot. Luckily, we had the itinerary and were able to tell the bus driver where we needed to be. We arrived with no further issues and lunch was at Campo Duro which is an ecolodge. It was a buffet style lunch and pretty good. They had freshly grown bananas so we helped ourselves to some of them and they were delicious.

After lunch we headed to the pier to catch a boat that took us to Tintoreras Bay. Along the way we saw a school of penguins and a couple of penguins hanging out on some rocks near Tintoreras Bay! They were adorable and apparently it’s rare to see so many of them all together (there had to be at least 20). The boat made it over to Tintoreras Islet where we did a very short walk. There were more marine iguanas than I could count, and when we first hopped off the boat there was a mamma sea lion feeding her baby.

We walked a bit and I was a bit frustrated because people were complaining when our guide stopped to show us something because they wanted to keep walking and just get to snorkeling. I get where they were coming from as it was a long day with a long hike in the heat. However, the landscape was nothing like anything I’d seen before. There was lava formations with lichens that formed only on the sides that catch the wind. There was no reason to complain in my book, we are on Isabela seeing such cool things. On the end of our walk we reached Tintoreras Grotto. There were tons of baby marine iguanas and mature female iguanas making their nests. We looked over a little fence that had been put up to keep people in the trail, and there were at least 20-30 white tip sharks swimming about. It was amazing and completely unreal to me! Off in the distance we saw 4 sea turtles, and a big spotted eagle ray jumping out of the water. Apparently it’s mating season for them and it’s common for them to be jumping with excitement. The whole islet was so cool and I am thrilled we made the stop to explore.

After getting back on the boat we put our snorkel gear on and eventually hopped off the boat. The visibility was pretty bad, but we saw a sea turtle and there was a huge ray of some sort that I was able to get a picture of. Some people saw sharks resting at the bottom but I didn’t see them since you had to free dive to see them. It was really cool as always and refreshing after a long day in the heat. Once back on board, they gave us Tangos which are essentially two

circular graham crackers with Oreo cream in the middle all covered in chocolate. We saw some penguins on the way back to port and headed back to the hotel before dinner. Dinner was at a local restaurant and I got pasta with pesto and veggies. It was very delicious and chocolate cake was for dessert. Our table ended up playing a couple rounds of telephone. I ended up mixing the words up because I heard Tyler wayyy wrong. I ended up crying in laughter, and I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard. We had a great time and all headed back to the hotel for the night since we had another early day ahead.