Galapagos Part Two

And then there were six. After saying farewell to the others at the airport we took the bus, ferry (well little tug boat), and then 4x4 taxi across the island to Puerto Ayora where we all ended up staying in the same hotel. Across the road from our hotel was the local fish ‘market’ a very small affair with far more pelicans and sealions than customers. And that entertained us every day as the sea lions begged at the feet of the fish mongers not dissimilar to Labrador dogs! The pelicans and one brave heron weren’t much better...

Lades and Duke returned to the US after a couple of days leaving us and Dale and Karen. A fantastic couple from deepest darkest Canada (Labrador) who have sold every one of their belongings and started a new life travelling. What was embarrassing was that their bags were about a quarter the size of ours!

We spent a great deal of time eating in the local street market, or sharing ice creams from the very conveniently placed new gelataria next door to the hotel. And discovered the local beach.

As you can see absolutely stunning, but blimey it was hot. Hence I am trying to cover every bit of my body in this photo:

Even the local beach was fascinating with a cactus forest,

marine iguanas,

baby sharks and very curious little birds.

We were due to leave the Galapagos islands on the Monday morning, having finished the cruise the previous Wednesday. But, about two hours before our flight we were at the airline office changing it! And so the four of us headed by speed boat to Isla Isabela. Here we found sand streets and a beautiful little family hotel on the most gorgeous beach. We could have spent the next week just standing in the door way to our room looking at the view!

Isabela is a quiet but very large island in the Galapagos archipelago. There are 6 volcanoes all of which are considered to be various degrees of active! But only a very small part of it is inhabited. Small but with two very nice bakeries – of course we discovered these quickly!

We hired bikes and cycled to the Wall of Tears – a giant wall of rocks built by prisoners for no purpose but to torture them it would seem. As if that wasn’t harsh enough all but two escaped and tried to sail to Panama but were killed en route. The two that stayed however were pardoned and still live on Isabela.

The cycle back was fun, avoiding lots of wild tortoises of various sizes in the ‘road’...

...and stopping at ‘lover’s beach’ to discover that it was an iguana mating ground. Not quite what the romantic in me had imagined! The last bit of the cycle was along the beach and was glorious.

We also had a great time snorkelling in a nearby lagoon and saw a mobilous ray feeding and lots of very curious fish.

The walk to the lagoon was fun:

The lazy sea lion who seemed to have a bit of a cold just stayed with our bags!

Finally we admitted that we couldn’t stay on the islands forever, despite the fact we could have happily done so! So we had our last cocktails on the beach with Dale and Karen followed by a giant pizza and left them to stretch out their time on the islands for a couple more weeks! Lucky devils.

A pelican joined us for drinks..

Interesting lunch

Gio and iguana outside our hotel