ECUADOR, GALAPAGOS ISLANDS: ISABELA ISLAND - TAGUS COVE PANGA RIDE AND EQUATOR CROSSING

 March 24, 2022, Afternoon and Evening

In the afternoon we took a panga trip to Vincente Roca Point, the northernmost site on Isabela Island. It is supposed to be a fantastic area for snorkeling, but the water was very murky.

I could see the great swaths of bubbles that Bob said had a soapy taste.

Close up, it didn't look like bubbles at all--more like DNA chains.

ECUADOR, GALAPAGOS ISLANDS: FERNANDINA ISLAND - ESPINOZA POINT

 March 23, 2022, Afternoon

The last expedition of the day was a walking excursion on Fernandina Island, an island next to Isabela Island, where we had spent the morning and the previous day. Our naturalist guide Fernanda told us Fernandina is her favorite island in the Galapagos, and not just because of the similarity to her name. She was excited to show it to us.

With the good omen of a rainbow behind us, we set out in the pangas for a dry docking on Fernandina Island. Our two-hour visit there may be our favorite experience of the entire Galapagos trip, and possibly one of our favorite travel experiences of all time.

We disembarked directly from the panga onto a short length of concrete that acted like a pier. We were the second panga in, and we wondered what everyone from the first panga was taking pictures of. When we got to that spot, we saw this green marine iguana crawling out of the water.

When we were only about 10 yards farther down the trail, we started hearing gasps from those in front of us, and when we could  see what they were looking at, we gasped too. A clearing was jam-packed with completely motionless marine iguanas--hundreds of them--some unceremoniously stacked on top of others, and they didn't even bother to acknowledge our presence. 

ECUADOR, GALAPAGOS ISLANDS: ISABELA ISLAND - URBINA BAY

 Wednesday, March 23, 2022, Morning

Every night after dinner, the crew would put the next day's itinerary on a giant TV screen so we could plan clothing, etc. Our second day would include two landings: one wet and one dry.

When we woke up the next morning, we had this view from our cabin window. 

After breakfast, we motored to Urbina Bay on Isabela Island. Bob took this photo of the Bay later in the day:

Our morning excursion required us to get out of the panga in knee-deep water (a "wet" landing).  The coarse volcanic sand of the beach wasn't very hospitable, and neither was the skull. Was it a warning of some kind? It was also already quite hot and very humid.  

ECUADOR, GALAPAGOS ISLANDS: ISABELA ISLAND - PUNTA MORENO AND ELIZABETH BAY

 March 22, 2022

During the night we sailed from Puerto Ayora to Punta Moreno, located on the largest of the Galapagos Islands, Isla Isabela. We spent the morning boating around Punta Moreno, and in the afternoon we traveled a little further up the coastline to Elizabeth Bay, shown below.

We had thought that being on a triple-hulled boat meant more stability in the water, but that was not the case, and during my first night on the Alya I did serious battle with my nemesis, motion sickness. Thank goodness we had a private bathroom. In spite of scopolamine patches and Dramamine, I felt queasy to some degree the entire trip, which was a bummer.

However, the next morning I was able to keep my breakfast down and join the others on an inflatable motorized raft, which I learned is called a panga, for an expedition to explore the coastline of Punta Moreno on the island of Isabela. There it is in the distance, as seen from our catamaran:

  

The Alya had two pangas, and every time we left the catamaran, we split our group of 19 (8 couples, 1 naturalist, 2 panga skippers) between the two.

We were not allowed to actually land and disembark on this day, but we still had some amazing experiences.

First, we pulled up alongside a coastline covered with a dense mangrove thicket.

As we got close, we saw that the trees were full of pelican nests.

Pelicans are huge, clumsy-looking birds with what looks like a toupee instead of feathers on their wings--at least from this angle.