Aug 30 Isabella island

I woke up right away and went straight to abs to see how her ankle was. It still looked pretty bad but she said that the pain had come down and bit. We talked about going to the hospital and decided that since we figured it wasn’t broken she was not go to the hospital but she would just stay on the boat and keep off her foot for the day.

It was too bad that she couldn’t come with us today because we saw the turtle breeding centre on our first excursion. First, we were picked up by a bus when we landed on Isabella. We took a long weaving sand road along the coast ans saw a few turtles and iguanas along the side of the road. We made a few stops along the way to see some high view points and walk inside the mangrove trees that lined the coastline.

We also stopped at a small natural lagoon where there were about 10 flamingos wading in the water. The were very funny to watch as they dance around in circles while they clear mud out of the way so they can find their food in the water.

Next it was on to the tourtoise breeding centre. They keep adults on the site permanently for breeding purposes. Their ages range from 80 to 125 years old. The eldest ones were huge! They also had many incubators for all the babies of different ages. They had a few different species there feeding on banana plant leaves. We got to see all different stages of life beginning in the embrio state, its amazing to see how small they could start life and how large they are as they age. Once they have reared the turtles to maturity they release them in the wild yo sustain the population on the island.

We also got an hour of free time to cruise the town on Isabella. Everything was very expensive so my new friend Julie ( from Germany ) bought a couple of beers and hung out in the park while the rest of the team explored. The town was very sleepy and incredibly hot. Then it was back to the boat for snacks and showers.

Out next excursion was snorkeling. This time we were actually searching for hammer head sharks but did no have any luck. We did swim with a few sea lions and 3 large sea turtles. The sea lions swam and played with us, blowing bubbles in our faces and chewing on our flippers. It was amazing!

The last activity of the day was a walk on on of the smaller islands connected with Isabella. We headed over to a large crack in the lava formations and found 15-20 white tipped reef sharks. We watched them swim for quite a while and we finally saw the elusive Galapagos penguins! They were very tiny and swam around in the bay catching sardines. On the island there were also hundreds of marine iguanas and we had to be careful because there were so many babies. They camouflaged perfectly on the black lava and were everywhere! We watched the gorgeous sunset from this island, the colours of the sky were all pink and orange and looked like sorbet in the sky.

Everyone on the boat is finally getting a bit more comfortable with each other. There are people from all over the world on our boat; England, Holland, Spain, Slovenia, France and Germany. Its quite an eclectic group and we don’t always understand each others sense of humour but they are all very nice and we have all shared some laughs with each other. Abbi and i have taken a real liking to Adrian and Jemma from england, and Arnold and Marlaina from Holland are kind of like our parents on board.

After dinner we watched a BBC movie about the Galapagos but unfortunately we started our 9 hour cruise to Fernandina island and the water was quite rough again. I only managed to see about 10 minutes of the film before i got the cold sweats and nausea set in. I went down to our cabin, took my sea sickness pills and slept until we arrived at Fernandina in the early morning.