Isabela Island, Galapagos, Ecuador

We were on Isabela Island for our 2nd week on the Galapagos. Isabella is just a bit bigger than the big island of Hawaii but only 3000 people live there and they almost all live in the village of Puerto Villamil (also called Isabela). We took a 2 hour boat to get there from the smaller, but more populous, island of Santa Cruz, and we shared the boat with a large musical band. They happened to be on Isabella to play for the island’s celebration of their 51st year of being a community. How lucky were we??? That night we got to see the whole town come out for a big party downtown and watch La Formula Original play their big band South American music. It is one of those times when we are happy to be in the right place at the right time. We also had a fantastic sunset before the band played on our first night on the island.

Our hotel was overlooking the Flamingo pond on the edge of the small town. We loved watching the 6 to 11 flamingos that were always searching for food in the small lagoon. I think this was our first time seeing American Flamingos in the wild. We of course took way too many pictures.

We spent the first full day on the island checking out the flamingos but also going swimming in a great free snorkeling bay called Concha de Perla (Pearl Shells). We ended up snorkeling here a few times this week to swim with stingrays, sea turtles, penguins, sea lions, marine iguanas and tons of fish. This was really an experience! I didn’t think it would be so easy to see so much wildlife so easily and so close up. And they didn’t really care about people at all…. I had to step over the marine iguanas and sea lions to get in the water. We really love the Galapagos!

We took a boat tour of this area on another day to see the penguins and blue footers a little more closely. We also were able to swim with them, the marine iguanas, and the sea lions, but it was a little tough to get pics because they move so fast. The next day, we took a snorkeling trip to a place called Los Tuneles (The Tunnels). It is a beautiful stretch of lava arches mixed with cactus that seemed really unworldly. But we were also able to swim with a lot of wildlife again. We probably saw over 50 sea turtles and were able to get really close to them for some great pics. We have seen sea turtles many times before but there were so many here that it was just on another level. There were also some reef sharks, more iguanas, sea lions, penguins and even some sea horses.

We also did some fun things on land. There was giant tortoise breeding center that we were able to walk to from town. They are doing a great job at trying to increase the population of land tortoises that have struggled with predators introduced by humans – dogs, goats and rats. The predators are now being controlled but the population needs to be increased back to the pre-human levels. We were able to see them on a very “active” day in the breeding center. Lots of tortoise sex going on.

We really enjoyed this little town on this island. Most of the roads weren’t paved and the restaurants weren’t that exciting but this is the little places that we really like. Sometimes the food was “interesting” – we had nachos one night at the Mexican restaurant but it was just American cheese on tortilla chips with some side dips. The more local food was fresh and tasty, especially seafood. Fish was delivered to the restaurants in pickups by the fishermen. It rained really hard one night so the main street was filled with 6 inches of water. But the town is just surrounded by beauty. Beautiful beaches and sunsets that we just yearn for…. Turquoise waters and just not many people….. It felt like it was all ours.

Besides the flamingos, we also saw some a few other other new birds. I saw 36 different birds in the Galapagos with 20 of them being new life listers for me. Current life list is now at 568 bird species. These 20 were mostly endemic (only Galapagos) and they were fun to find but it doesn’t compare to the amount of birds we found in Costa Rica, Guatemala or Colombia. I still have a lot of fun wildlife pics.

This really was a fantastic experience that we will remember forever. We might even come back again to see other islands. We want to see more but it is time to leave. Next stop Panama City!