Isabela Island
This morning dawned clear and hot! We disembarked on a black sand beach where two sea turtles had nested last night and many others had nested on previous nights. The crest of the beach was pockmarked with deep turtle “body pits” which is the final sand throwing phase of nesting. For this outing at Urbina Bay, I divided our guests into four groups according to their desire to walk fast or slower and far or shorter: two groups of fast-long hikers went out with Aura and Christian, one group of medium-long hikers followed Christian and I took another group of guests to do a shorter trail.
We were lucky that there was a slight breeze and some clouds blew in to cover the sun from time to time, but the morning was still hot! However, we had a fabulous walk along a trail that looped down the coast and then swung inland and finally turned back out to the beach. In 1954 a dramatic uplift occurred here and the coast was pushed high and dry exposing marine species like tube worms and corals that were fixed to the rocks. We can still find evidence that where we walked today was once ocean floor.
We were pleasantly surprised today to find a total of four giant tortoises on the trail this morning. One small fellow was exceedingly curious about us and came over to sniff and investigate the group of short hikers. We all also found half a dozen large, colorful land iguanas and got many photos of them resting, nodding their heads in territorial display and moving slowly out of our path. Back at the beach we swam in the cool clear sea and a few of us snorkeled.
In the afternoon we had several options to choose from. Naturalist Aura took two groups of kayakers along the shore of Tagus Cove and they enjoyed seeing a blue-footed booby feeding frenzy, cormorants, sea lions, and sea turtles. Naturalists Tommy and Christian had a fabulous outing with the snorkelers. Besides all they saw while swimming along the shore, they also found a small pod of bottle-nosed dolphins, a small pod of common dolphins and to their thrill they saw a Bryde’s whale!
The late afternoon hikers and kayakers got drenched but enjoyed themselves anyway. For the kayakers there was much wildlife to watch as they paddled and the hikers enjoyed walking in a lovely palo santo forest and the view back towards the ship from above. Tommy took a group for a Zodiac ride and they saw cormorants and pelicans and boobies; and they made it back before the drenching rain!
I talked this evening about my year and a half spent camping on Volcan Alcedo doing my Ph.D. research, and gave a briefing about tomorrow’s visit to Santiago Island. We had a 12-hour navigation to reach Santiago, so off we went just before dinner, rocking into the night.
