Isla Isabella

Isabella is the largest of all Galapagos islands, but, of all inhabited islands, has the smallest population. The ferry pier is at about a 15 minute walk from the town center. With my bag, however, I took a pick-up taxi for 2 dollars to my hotel, the Grad Tortuga (giant turtle). The rest of the afternoon I spent getting orientated in town (which really wasn't that hard) and look around at the beach. The town only had a few streets (all dirt roads), and all shops, restaurants and tour operators were within walking distance of the beach and town center. As it currently isn't high season on Galapagos, everything seemed rather empty.

On the next morning, I was visiting part of the highlands of Isabelle, the volcanos Sierra Negra and Chico. First we were taken out of town for about 18 km by bus, the remaining 8 km we then had to walk (there and back). We started in the middle if the clouds (which seems to be quite normal), so it was quite wet and the path quite muddy at the beginning. A while later, the path was less muddy, the vegetation was still very green, and still clouds were around us, so we couldn't really see much apart from our path.

After about 1.5 hours we reached the top, from where (as we saw later coming back) you would have nice few on the crater of the volcano Sierra Negra, which, with around 10 km in diameter, is one of largest craters in the world.

From here we continued downwards again, into a lava field of the volcano. The landscape was pretty bizarre. At first there was still the one or the other cactus growing between the lava, later we were just between the page, with different shapes and colors. The last erruption of this volcano wad just in 2009. We walked through the lava for about an hour, when we reached a nice viewpoint over part of the island and another volcano, Chico. Just as we had reached the viewpoint, the clouds opened up and we had a beautiful view. On the way back we then could also enjoy the whole scenery with more sun and less clouds, and actually were able to see the crater of Sierra Negra. Only in the last, muddy bit, the clouds were still there, although it was slightly less wet.

Back in town, (after cleaning my shoes and pants from all the mud,) I went to visit, and swim and snorkel in the Concha y Perla, a little lagoon right next to the ferry pier. On the short path from the pier to the lagoon, several marine iguanas were enjoying the sun, and many sea lions were sleeping on the path, on the beach, on the benches at the pier, or on the little boats lying in the bay.

From the pier it didn't really look like there would be much to see snorkeling, but I gave it a try anyway. I hadn't even been in the water for 5 minutes, when suddenly 3 sea lions came up to me, swimming around me. It felt like they were curious at what I'm doing there, what my camera was and wanted to play. And like this, for about an hour, I kept swimming around with sea lions. They would disappear after while, but others showed up, and so on... They just seemed to be very relaxed and playful.

Later towards the evening, the last hour before sunset, I went for a walk slightly further inside the island again, along a few lagunas to watch flamingos (and other birds). Unfortunately most of them were quite far away from the path, but I did get to see a few a bit closer as well.

The next morning I, once again, had to get up very early, as I had to catch the ferry back to Santa Cruz at 6 in the morning (plus being there half an hour earlier to get the luggage checked for fruits etc. again). Bye, bye, Isabella, I had a really good time!