May 29, 2019
Today we got up early to catch the ferry from Santa Cruz to Isabela Island. The total trip takes about two hours to complete by speedboat. The boat part did not make Sarah excited as she gets seasick very easily. Sarah, Annaleigh, and Noah all took seats in the lower deck and Kevin took one of the few seats up with the Captain.
The ferry trip was uneventful except for when the ferry driver had to suddenly turn to avoid a sea turtle. Sarah survived without getting too sick and Kevin made two new friends from Ecuador David and Andrea, who offered to help out during the rest of the trip if we get into a bind.
Isabela Island has a much more tropical feel then Santa Cruz did. The waters are turquoise and there are lots of Palm trees lining the beaches. The whole island has a much quieter and more laid back feel to it. Again we were greeted by young Sea Lions sleeping right across the path.
We were able to check into our hotel at 9 AM and drop off stuff and figure out what to do with the rest of the day. First, we decided to get brunch and wandered down the street and found a restaurant that was open. Sarah, Annaleigh, and Noah had pasta and Kevin had a “steak”, which was much more like grilled pot roast meat. The meat was good and lean, but it was very tough and stringy, the definition of steak is very different here.
After lunch/breakfast we decided to wander around and find an activity to book for Thursday. We had discussed doing three different activities on Isabela; Los TĂșneles tour, Concha de Perla, and Las Tintoreras. We decided to go for Los TĂșneles, which is a network of flooded lava tunnels that are homes to an amazing amount of different animal species.
We returned to the hotel with one activity booked and decided to go to Concha de Perla. We grabbed the snorkeling masks, shoes and fins and walked to the entrance. On the path, we again had to navigate around sleeping seas lions and marine iguanas as we traversed the path through the mangroves. At the end of the path is a platform where you can launch into a large lagoon filled with many fish and even a few sea turtles.
We had put on sunscreen and found out that the snorkeling masks would not work properly with sunscreen on our faces. After getting the masks working correctly, we snorkeled around for a few hours. We had the incredible opportunity to swim with and watch a sea turtle feeding in the lagoon. We decided to call it quits when the water started getting cloudy as the tidal waters mixed with the waters of the mangrove forest.
We headed back to the hotel and cleaned our gear out. We still had some daylight left so we decided we wanted to go see the flamingos that inhabit the lagoons on Isabela. The hotel proprietor told us we needed a taxi, but we decided to walk, it was only a ten-minute walk. When we got to the flamingo lagoon there was only one lone flamingo. We decided to head to the other lagoons, but we took a wrong turn and ended up circling the flamingo lagoon.
From there we headed to the beach to watch the sunset. Noah and Annaleigh decided to go play in the sand which is very fine and sticks to everything. They played on the beach and in the surf until it started getting dark. We finished the evening with dinner, where Noah got to try another new fruit guanabana or also known as soursop (Noah love’s trying new and different exotic fruits).