Isabella revisited

Up at 5:00 this morning to look for dolphins, no luck, they were elusive this morning I guess someone forgot to wake them up.

Fishing boat we found today, fresh fish for supper!

Off on our first zodiac ride at about 6:45 to our landing on Isabella Island. This morning we landed on a black sand beach that the turtles lay their eggs on, we saw lots of tracks and nests on the beach but no turtles. One of the tracks was quite new, we were shown how you can tell by they way the tail mark is in the sand.

We had a much shorter walk today, only about a mile. The highlight of this walk is the land iguanas, we did not see too many as compared to some of the other animals we have seen, but the colors are beautiful, many shades of yellows. It is coming up to breeding season in December for these animals and the males are very territorial, one of them had quite a wound from a battle on his side.

This is the newest part of the island we landed on, it was an uplifting from the sea in the 70’s, it is amazing how the whole path we walked on was sand from the sea that was not placed there by humans, it was just from the uplifting. Many shells could be found on the path when we were quite far from shore.

Land Iguana tail tracks

Back to the ship and a 10 minute turn around for our snorkel tour. This was another nice day, but much murkier due to it being quite a bit more wave action. It was so hot on our early excursion that everyone except 2 people came snorkelling this morning just to get cooled off. The highlight for me this morning was again the sea turtles, there are so many here it is amazing.

Back to the ship because we are moving spots again and Juan wants us to have an early lunch so we can be back out again for 12:00 for a 3 hour excursion. We all think he is nuts, 3 hours in the heat of the day on the hottest day we have had so far what could be worth it. Off we go on the zodiacs and we luck out again and get Juan again in ours. It has turned out to be the challenge of the week to try to figure out which zodiac Juan will be in for the rides to shore, he is continually feeding us information, there are always 2 zodiacs going in and the other drivers really don’t speak any English, so if you don’t get Juan we call it the dud ride. Most times it really doesn’t matter, it is a quick zip into shore, but Juan I think has laser eyesight and spots interesting things to show us even on these quick trips in. So this trip we end up with Juan and are heading in to shore and see a flightless cormorant at the end of the lava outcropping.

Then we look little further and the lave is full of marine iguanas. Look into the water and there is one swimming to shore. This is why we are hitting the beach so early during the heat of the day, the marine iguanas are heading into shore after their feeding to rest and warm up. This is truly an amazing sight, we got out of our zodiacs and just sat on the lava and watched as hundreds of iguanas made their way into shore, it was like a freeway of iguanas from the ocean to the shore.

If a male came onto shore and another large male was already basking close to that spot there were little battles for territory. There were literally so many of them as we walked along you had to be very careful where you stepped, marine iguanas are very dark and blend in quite well with the lava rock. I don’t find them very appealing to look at, they have these ugly crustations of salt on top of their heads, and all these spiky things on their backs, yuck. But very impressive. They were landing in these tide pools and them climbing up onto shore, the tide pools provided the opportunity to see some of my most favourite sights so far.

In one tide pool there were little sea lion pups, always fun to watch. One chased the iguana right out of the water and onto a ledge and then they both jumped back into the water. Another pup was lying in the sand and the iguana was sitting on a ledge above it and the pup was biting the iguana tail and playing with it, I couldn’t believe how long this went on for and the iguana didn’t move. In another tide pool we saw a minimum of 10 sea turtles, this pool was very shallow and it was so easy to see them, it was only about 100 feet by 20 feet in size. Migrant turtles from other places in the world move here for part of their lives to feed on the rich algae until they are ready for breeding when they go back home, we saw examples of this with a turtle from Hawaii and one from Indonesia in this mix of turtles.

Watching the different actions of the marine iguanas was so interesting, seeing them swimming, then climbing out of the water, their claiming of territory for the males by bobbing their heads, their washing the algae from their teeth with their tongues, spitting the salt through their nostrils, and how they move from getting warm in the sun, to cooling off when they get too hot, truly fantastic to watch. So much activity all around you, in one picture I was trying to line up a sea lion pup with a sally lightfoot crab, with the marine iguana, with a filightless cormorant, and a turtle in the water, surrounded by lava. We asked Juan why he couldn’t have provided a flamingo and a penguin for the shot.

We landed on this part of the island on the lava, when it was time to leave we went over to a mangrove where there was a dock that was now accessible by the water because it was now higher tide. This was a perfect example of how the uplifting changed this island, it is only accessible in high tide now.

Back to the ship again, I am extremely hot and so hoping for a chance to swim in the ocean, but no, the zodiacs are brought onto the ship and we are off. I grab a sea sick pill right away, thank goodness because this turns into quite a rough ride for about 3 hours. I fell asleep at the table while everyone was just discussing the day, everyone is pretty much like extended family by now we have spent so much time together. An experience like this really brings you all to the same level, sometimes it is a bit of a survival mode we’re all helping each other out.

 After my nap I went to the bow of the boat because I knew the fresh air would help. The scenery was getting amazing, you could easily see the different volcanoes on the island and the caldera was very prominent. I looked off to my right at one point and saw 5 fins in the water so I yelled sharks, wrong again. It was fins of oceanic sunfish, so I now learn these are the largest fish in the ocean. They slowed down the boat so we could follow these elusive fish for a while, it was very hard to make them out because the water is very choppy, but the fins were very visible. They are part of the puffer family and really are like a huge beach ball with fins, they weigh up to one ton. They live on jelly fish only and have a very tiny mouth, I wish we could transport some home to get rid of the jellyfish there. Juan says nothing really eats them, but he has seen an orca playing with them.

Very rough on board, some resorted to crawling to move around

Sunfish

This afternoon we also crossed the equator. We were all brought up to the bridge to watch the GPS so we could see when we were at 0.00.00.000 . They had cocktails for us to toast the crossing, it went by a little too quickly because we were with the current, so they turned us around and we did it again, and toasted again, so of course then we had to turn around again to get back on course so we got another toast, 3 crossing of the equator for us! They also gave us a tour of the bridge while we were up there which was very interesting, we have access to the entire ship any time we like, the only place that is off limits is the engine room, but if we want to see that we can ask for a tour as well. We also found out here that Juan is a certified Captain for ships up to 150 tons, he had taken his turn on watch while we ate lunch today to give the rest of the crew a 2 hour break.

Supper today was served on our plates instead of platters that we could help ourselves from due to the rockiness of the ship and Juan ate dinner with us which lead to some interesting conversations about Darwin and the theory of evolution. He has promised a discussion on evolution and religion to come, this should be interesting. A quick note about the food, for lunch today we had wahoo fish that was amazing, we traded some chicken and beef for fresh fish from a fishing boat that we were anchored near this morning.