Adventures!

We left San Cristobal this morning and headed for Santa Cruz. We even had to get our bags checked when moving from island to island. A couple of girls had mandarins that they to eat or leave. I guess I forgot to talk about getting into the Galapagos; it is an interesting process.
Once we were at the airport we had to wait in a special line where we paid $10 for an immigration card and had all of our luggage sent through an x-ray. The card is a new system put in place 4 months ago attempting to curb the amount of illegal immigration to the islands. With the card, the Galapagos National Park knows when everyone comes in and if they leave when they’re suppose to. The x-ray checks for things like fruits and what not. We then went through normal airport security. When we were nearly ready to land in the Galapagos the flight attendants opened all of the overhead compartments and sprayed them all with something to kill any sort of bugs or whatnot that may have been present. This is to help control the introduction of new species to the islands. It was funny though, they did not do anything to the luggage under the seats. Once in Galapagos we had to wait in a line where they checked our passports, punched our immigration cards, and collected the $100 entrance fee (already covered in our program cost—thank goodness!). Then you are free to enter the islands!

Ok, anyways. We took a speed boat from one island to the next. I didn’t know I would get so nauseous! I spent the entire two and a half hours on the boat concentrating very hard on the horizon, haha. I decided to be sure to take my seasickness medicine before the rest of our boat trips. We arrived in time for lunch and had a free afternoon. A few of us hiked up to a beach recommended by one of our program leaders. It was a 40 minute hike at a fairly vigorous pace—very tiring! It was really worth it. The beach was great. It was white sand, super calm, and the water was perfect. After a swim a couple of us made this sweet sandcastle! We saw more marine iguanas and these endemic cactus trees that are really cool.

The next day we had a 2 hour boat ride to Isabella Island at 6 am. I think the combination of the early morning and my seasickness medicine made me incredibly drowsy! We began our day by visiting Muro de las Lágrimas or The Wall of Tears. It is a wall built in the 1950’s by prisoners that were stationed on the island. It is something like 3 m wide, 6 m tall and 25 m long. Its construction was basically torture as the rocks used were ridiculously heavy and there were often collapses killing men.

Next we went to another giant tortoise reserve where they have 5 different species of tortoises. We were able to see them all, see some eggs, and hold a turtle that was only one month old!! I was way tempted to put him in my pocket…so cute.

That afternoon we went for a walk around the island. This was the view! It certain type of is a lava…rather than making the rope like formations, it is sharp and jagged because it is more gaseous than the other. The lyceums growing are the white; they are the organisms that begin to break down the lava into usable soil. There were also marine iguanas everywhere! It is apparently the end of their nesting season. We saw hundreds of baby iguanas. It was cool.
We then snorkeled with the Galapagos penguins!! They are the coolest animals ever (after the sea turtles, of course). They were darting around catching fish as flew underwater. There were also some playful sea lions and sea cucumbers (a really big asset in the fishing industry here).
Today we went horseback riding up a volcano! I was a little nervous—I’m really scared of horses. It ended up being a good day; I had a really nice horse. It took us an hour to ride up to the top of the crater. We rode through what is know here as a drizzle forest. The volcano is tall enough to stop the clouds that blow in from the ocean creating a constant cloudy mist. It was pretty muddy. The crater we saw is called Cierra Negra, last erupted in 2005, and has a diameter of over 10 km. We didn’t have a lot of time up there, but we hiked around a bit.

After we made it back down, we had lunch and got on the boat to head back to Santa Cruz. We are back and staying in this really nice hotel for the rest of the week as we take day tours to other islands.