Island Hopping Part 2

A post from Corinne Dorais


Day 3: Monday, October 31

Monday morning we caught a lancha to Isabela Island. Before leaving each island to travel to another, everybody (locals as well as tourists) must go through a checkpoint. At the checkpoint an officer opens all of your bags and looks through them to make sure you are not carrying anything organic (or any animals!) between islands. After passing inspection, each bag receives a tag that identifies what island it came from and where it is going. When you get off the lancha at the end of the trip, another inspection agent collects the tags. The inspection checkpoints are an attempt to minimize the introduction of non-native species. Animal and plant species from the mainland have destroyed ecosystems on several of the islands. Also, species that are native to one island may not be native to another and can have the same damaging effects as introduced species from the mainland.

We got to Isabela around noon. After checking into our new hostel and having a quick lunch, we walked to the small harbor and boarded small flat-bottomed boats. The boats took us a short distance off the coast of Isabela to an islet known as Tintoreras. Tintoreras (named for the sharks that rest in the nearby shallow waters) looked like another planet. A small gravel path had been cleared but other than that the islet was composed entirely of jagged volcanic rocks. At times we were forced to leave the path and scramble across the rocks because Tintoreras was covered in marine iguanas (many of whom enjoyed sunning themselves in the middle of the path.) Marine iguanas are a gray/black color and blend in well with the dark rocks, but even with their camouflage we must have seen hundreds, if not thousands.

After exploring Tintoreras by foot, we jumped in the water to snorkel in the shallow bay nearby. There we saw rays and fish as well as several sea turtles. One swam up right below me and I followed it for several meters before it sped away (they can be very fast in the water!) It was so close I could have reached down and touched its shell.

That afternoon we also saw our first Galapagos penguins! They stood very still with their wings held away from their bodies. Our guide explained they did this as a way of cooling themselves.

Day 4: Tuesday, November 1

Big, rolling waves arrived to Isabela the day before we did. They were a lot of fun on the beach and surfers took advantage of every break near town, but they didn’t make it easy to travel by boat. They were so big and powerful that we were not able to enter the lava tunnels we planned to visit Tuesday morning. These tunnels opened into the sea and could only be reached by boat, but the entrance was narrow and only a few captains were willing to risk entering, even on a calm day. Instead of the lava tunnels, we anchored in a shallow area that bordered the shore. We walked along the lava that seemed to rest on top of the water and watched tintoreras swim lazily beneath our feet. Though it looked solid from where we were standing, there were many tunnels under that lava that the sharks used to travel from pool to pool. We saw an octopus and lots of crabs hiding in the crevices and shallow tide pools. After half an hour of walking around on land, we hopped in the water to snorkel around the shallow pools and under the lava bridges. In addition to the resting tintoreras and many fish, our guide found a tiny seahorse! It clung to a thin mangrove root by its tail and didn’t move, but it was still incredible to see one in the wild.

After lunch, we snorkeled near the harbor and had a relaxing afternoon of playing cards and exploring the town.

Day 5: Wednesday, November 2

Immediately following breakfast, we piled into the open-air bus and drove about 45 minutes into the highlands to the base of Volcán Sierra Negra, one of Isabela’s five volcanoes. The garúa (a fog that often covers the islands this time of year) was so thick that we could not see Volcán Chico (one of the craters of Volcán Sierra Negra) even when we were hiking along the rim of the crater.  The sun broke through as we were hiking across the lava fields. Again, it felt like another planet. There was very little vegetation and black lava surrounded us everywhere we looked. Craters dotted the landscape. It was easy to see that the field we walked on had once been liquid lava. After several miles we turned around to hike back the way we came. When we reached Volcán Chico again the garúa had cleared and we were shocked to see that the crater was gigantic. Our guide told us it is the second largest volcanic crater by diameter in the world and the largest that is still active (it last erupted in 2005.)
We stopped at an hacienda in the highlands for lunch. After eating we explored the farm, which had beautiful gardens and several large enclosures where giant tortoises roamed. We wandered through banana trees that were mixed in with mandarins and pineapples and the owners let us each pick some fruit to take back to the hotel with us.

Day 6: Thursday, November 3

Our last full day of the trip we drove to Muro de las Lágrimas (Wall of Tears) and walked back into town, stopping at other sites along the way. During WWII, the United States had several military bases set up on the Galapagos Islands. On Isabela there were three detachments maintaining radio stations as part of a surveillance system in the Central Pacific designed to protect the Panama Canal from attack. When the US base was shut down, the infrastructure the military had built remained. In 1946, the government of Ecuador established a penal colony on Isabela using the houses left behind by the US army to house prisoners and guards. To keep the prisoners busy, the guards had them build a wall out of lava rocks. Conditions were harsh and prisoners were brutally punished, leading to the name “Wall of Tears.”

That afternoon we went to a private property in the highlands. There was a giant hole in the ground that looked like it went down at least a hundred feet. The owner asked if any of us would like to descend into the hole and a group of us jumped at the chance. We saw a pile of helmets and assumed we would be putting on harnesses and clipping in to a safety system, but soon realized that we would be making our own harnesses out of pieces of rope! After (very carefully!) tying the rope into a harness, we walked around to a steep tunnel that led into the hole. There was a rope ladder that had been laid on the ground to form “stairs” and lengths of rope we held on to as we began to descend. Soon we reached the bottom-or rather what we had thought was the bottom when we had been standing at the top.  From our new vantage point it was clear that the hole was actually a cavern that had no end in sight. The steep walls quickly turned vertical and we took turns climbing down a rope and ladder system further into the cavern. Each person in front of me quickly disappeared into blackness and it was almost impossible to hear the voices of those who had already reached the bottom. The climb took quite a while. It was damp, especially once I was deep enough that only a few rays of sunshine filtered down, and the ropes where muddy and slippery. Eventually I reached the bottom of the cavern-only to find once again that it kept going deeper into the Earth. We, however, did not go any further. At this point we were almost 500 feet underground. It was incredible to see the walls of the cavern, which were almost entirely volcanic rock.

After the cavern, we drove a short distance to Cueva de Sucre (Sucre’s Cave.) The cave was actually a huge system of lava tunnels, some so long that park officials have never found the end. We each wore a headlamp and stayed close to our guide as it was very easy to get turned around and lost. At one point we turned off all our lights and stood in the darkness. It was so dark I couldn’t even see my own hands.
When we got back to town, a few friends and I went to a bonfire on the beach by one of the hotels to enjoy our last night of the trip. It was the perfect end to the perfect trip!

Another post soon!

Love,
Corinne