We had a couple of days (well nearly a week) to spend on Santa Cruz between our Dive liveaboard and Island cruise. For the first two days we just did some souveneir shopping and ate and drank (& visited Tortuga bay which we already mentioned). We caught up with a couple of guys from the dive boat, had a good night with too much food and alcohol (thanks Dirk). Dirk is from Germany and we were affectionately refering to him as CEO of the world. He is a CIO (Chief Information Officer) of a big software company that supplies database management options to some of the worlds biggest companies. He has staff in about 10 countries and speaks German, French, English, Thai, Vietnamese and Mandarin...crazy! He also has a "small" dive camera of which steph was very jealous!
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| CEO of the world, Dirk |
For the last couple of days before our cruise we decided to head on a short 3 day tour of a nearby island called Isabela, which we had been told was really nice. The tour we booked involved a volcano hike and some snorkelling, sounds cruisy enough!
We left Santa Cruz at 2pm Thursday afternoon for a 2 hour speedboat ride to the biggest island of the archipelago, Isabela. As soon as we got off the boat, the wildlife was again on display. As we waited for our taxi on the pier we had a group of four sea lions frolicing in the shallows, one playing with a small piece of rubbish to amuse himself. Not far in the distance a penguin was fishing behind a boat, a seal sun bathing on a buoy, as well as boobies, pelicans and frigates flying overhead.
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| One of the welcoming party |
A small ride to our Hotel (surprisingly nice hotel, didn't actually think to ask about that when we booked), with a lagoon outfront and three flamingos fishing for shrimp and other microscopic goodies. We went for a small drive to another small lagoon to find a few more flamingos. It seems odd to have flamingos in the Galapagos, they seem a bit out of place. They are so colorful, whereas the rest of the animals are sort of muted tones.
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| Our hotel, nice considering we had forgotten to ask! |
Dinner was supplied at the hotel, we shared a table with a young couple from Chile. The extent of the conversation (in Spanglish) was something like: HI, Im Hew and this is Steph. What are your names and What to you do for work....Only took us about 10 minutes to get that out once we mustered the confidence to actually start the conversation...hahahaha
The next day was an early rise and drive over to the closest national park to visit two volcanoes, one is the tallest volcano on the archipelgo, Volcan Cierra Negra, which is around 1500m tall. We set off for what we thought was going to be a short, leisurely climb of this modestly sized volcano...HA! We spent the next 5 hours almost running through some crazy, almost out of this world terrain. The Galapagos islands were created by Volcanic eruptions between 500,000 and 5 million years ago, so the terrain is quite barron as eruptions had been quite regular, the last was only in 2005. Some of the views and scenery were awesome, alot of the area a combination of lava tubes (a tunnel of lava), lava flows (rivers of lava), and spatter cones (small cones that explode and spatter molten rock all over the place). The further we went the less vegetation there was, the most recent erruptions are just barron rock. You could also see the change in the colors of the landscape, from black to brown, to red. As time goes past after an erruption, the iron in the rocks is oxidised and they turn a reddish brown color. There are also yellow patches around which are where there is/was sulphur escaping from below. It looked pretty crazy, maybe like an extra terriestrial surface might. Only Scientists are allowed on the cauldera of Cerra Negra as it still vents noxious sulphuric gases that are over 300 degrees - would be a nasty surprise for a tour group...
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| The caldera of Cierra Negra |
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| Our crazy guide and some sharp terrain |
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| A species of Darwin finch on top of the cacti |
We had a short break for our lunchboxes and powered back out down the trail to were we started....It was hard going, Steph was her usual beetroot colour (sweaty and slightly cross) and I was glad we finally could see the finish in the distance. Turns out we had gone 25km's in the space of 4 hours!!! Not a bad pace when you add in lunch and plenty of time to take pictures and have the guide explain the vegetation and geology.
Later in the afternoon we had a small boat tour of the bay where we were able to view colonies of penguins, blue footed boobies, and marine iguanas.
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| Lunch break |
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| Blue footed boobies |
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| Penguins and mangroves, a rare combination |
After that we snorkeled in a protected inlet. Saw some nice big reef fish, a few turtles, and marine iguanas swimming - which was really cool. They use their tails as both a rudder and propellor, they kind of look like dogs swimming from above but like dragons (good one Steph) from below....bizarre.
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| A swimming marine iguana, we got a couple of good movies of this |
We had an early start the next day to catch the ferry back to Santa Cruz to be at the airport by midday to meet our cruise ship. Steph got saturated on the ferry...and nearly left behind some luggage. Oops! After a 5am start we devoured our breakfast at about 10am, we were starving....
