Day 4

 

Oh the sound of the anchor at the wee hours of the morning like 5 am , i felt like i gave birth to the anchor every morning it seemed like it was right under my bed and shortly after that the voice of our guide Paulina bright and early ( 6:30) over the sound system of the boat....good morning everyone we have arrived at Isabella Island at Puerto Villamil, breakfast will be at 7 and we will be departing for our hike at 8 , oh hell what did i sign up for???? What was i thinking i HATE mornings!!!!! But believe it or not i got up and out of bed every morning like i was some joe pro hiker and adventurer ready for the day! I was so excited to see what we would find , see do i was full of adrenaline.

At 8 am we departed the Catamaran to begin our hike up Sierra Negra Volcano  is a large shield volcano at the South eastern end of Isabela Island in the Galapagos that rises to an altitude of 3,687 ft. It coalesces with the volcanoes Cerro Azul to the west and Alcedo to the north. It is one of the most active of the Galapagos volcanoes with the most recent historic eruption in October 2005. We hiked to the top and it was a beautiful and peaceful view. On the way up we saw quite a few species of finches and incense plants, you could smell them when they were around. After taking in the view we hiked back down and head back to the boat for lunch and then returned to land for our trip to the Wall of Tears or in Spanish El Muro De Las Lagrimas which is a wall that was built by 300 prisoners that we placed on this island and used to test out how the living would be , the idea of the wall was to keep the prisoners busy and in. The boulders were left behind by the US Army. I could have skipped on this landmark and just gone to the beach but just went with the flow and really there is no skipping on anything unless you want to stay on the boat, The Galapagos are a very controlled area and environment you can not just roam freely unless you are in an inhabited area or Island. There are 5 of the 17  islands are inhabited: Baltra, Floreana, Isabela, San Cristobal and Santa Cruz.

Once we made our way through the Wall of  Tears we then headed towards the rearing center which is run by the Galapagos National park and there one of our group friends Christophe just happened to notice a very tiny baby tortoise in and area that it needed to be removed because of the rats that would  be able to get  it and have it for dinner...so our group did a good deed and saved a baby tortoise. There are lots of increasing impact from tourism, encroaching invasive species, increasing immigration from the mainland, and so forth but we did our deed for the day.From the rearing center we took a brisk walk to the beach and saw many marine iguanas , flamingos and many different types of other birds, everywhere you turn everywhere you look is just fascinating. Some of us took a sea dip and others like me just lounged around taking in the view. We then started a walk down the beach back to a little pier in town for our pickup back to the boat but on our way there stumbled upon a really cool little beach bar called Betos , Beto in fact was there working on Sunday and was nice enough to sell us Alcohol on Sunday which is usually a no no on the Islands. But out he came with fresh coconuts( coco loco's)  filled with Betos own moonshine!Yee Haw the party was on! Another great day.