Isabela Island, The Galapagos

This picture says it all - Dashiell snorkeling with sea turtles. There were too many to count.

Isabela Island is the largest of The Galapagos islands, with a shape of a seahorse. The island is home to 6 volcanos and is a "hot spot" - all of the volcanos are active; Wolf Volcano erupted as recently as January 2022 and unique creatures still roam its slopes - this volcano is the only place in the world where you can find the pink iguana. The island is also home to 5 different species of Giant Tortoises, pink flamingos, and penguins. We were on a mission to see them all.

We took a 2.5-hour ferry to Isabela from Santa Cruz Island where we found a nice, quiet town situated right on the beach. This island has an entirely different look and feel from Santa Cruz. The trees are more green and less thorny. There are fewer tourists and no shops selling tchotchkes. The sandy streets in this small village have a central square where we immediately met the local kids and in the evening they performed an Isabela talent show for the native families living on the island. It has a much more authentic feel, which was surprising given that the industry is centered around tourism.

Within 15 minutes of landing on Isabela, Dashiell experienced a highlight of the entire trip. Since the start of our travels, Dashiell has been trying to catch a lizard. Here, there are thousands of lava lizards, so he set out to catch one - and did! The lizard immediately dropped its tail and then sat there, stunned beside the tail, watching it flip-flop like a fish out of water until the tail died. Fun Fact: Did you know that a lizard can drop its tail and regrow it 6 times - and it takes around 60 days to regrow?!

Imogen and Dashiell on the tree where he caught the lava lizard.

Isabela is a very bike-able island, so we hopped on & hit the trails - Dashiell on his own bike, Zander in a carrier, and Imogen in a bike seat. Our first stop was the nature preserve where an organization worked to save the tortoises. Just like on Santa Cruz, there are organizations working to ensure that the tortoises survive their first 6 years of life. Afterwards, they can safely live in the wild without fear of predators.

Just outside the tortoise preserve we found a lagoon with bright pink flamingos!

Pink flamingos - they look so far away, but were really close and I couldn't quite capture how bright pink they are. This is the first time that I have seen flamingos in the wild.

Unfortunately, Dashiell's bike got a flat tire, which killed his mojo. So Dashiell headed back and the rest of us kept going. We took the trail to the Wall of Tears - a wall built by prisoners as a form of punishment over 14 years in the 1940s and 1950s. Along the way, the path follows the coast while we dodged tortoises and iguanas. Let me repeat that since it is such an unusual experience ... we had to carefully be on the lookout for iguanas and giant tortoises so we didn't hit them with our bikes. I enjoyed this ride so much that I took Dashiell back the next day with just the two of us.

Isabela's bike paths which run right beside the beach.

The Ultimate Luxury

We woke up the next day to a cloud-covered beach. So, instead of hitting the sites early, we gave ourselves a break for what my brother and I call "The Ultimate Luxury" - watching a movie on a perfect day in a beautiful location. While we didn't have the perfect day, we certainly had a gorgeous location - our hotel was right on the beach!

1: Zander enjoying the view 2. The view from our bed 3. Snuggled up for The Ultimate Luxury

We still found time to play on the beach when the sun came out. Low season rocks - the beach was all ours!

We also watched the marine iguanas eat their breakfast of green algae off of the lava rocks on the beach. This was the most that we saw these guys move - normally they are stacked on top of each other and basking in the sun.

Concha de La Perla

In the afternoon, we went to a local snorkeling spot. This became one of my favorite snorkeling locations because it is easily accessed by foot, doesn't require a guide to access it, and has so much diversity in a small area. To get there, we walked down a wooden path through a tunnel of red mangroves with sea lions literally sleeping in the middle of the path like guardians of the snorkeling hole. I must admit, it's a little intimidating skirting a gigantic sea lion in your path!

If you are lucky, you can see sea turtles, rays, sea lions, penguins and iguanas, as well as reef fish. I was lucky enough to swim with sea turtles. Just after I got out of the water, the sea lions came out to play. You have to be very fortunate to see the penguins, though, as they are mating on a different side of the island. Dashiell also came snorkeling with me, but while he was getting into the water, he was bitten by a damselfish - who knew that fish bite?!

The water was so clear that we could spot the sea turtles from above and watch the iguanas swim across the top of the water.

Tour of the Tintoreras

This tour was, undoubtably, the highlight of our trip to The Galapagos. The Tintoreras is a small islet which is famous for the white-tipped sharks found along the reef. Surrounding the reef are fields of lava covered with lichen. And hidden within these lava fields are iguanas, unique birds, and a volcano caldera.

A volcano's caldera within the ocean floor.

We were welcomed by the sea lions singing to us.

I'll skip to the magic. Here - in this little canal - we found tons of sharks. We counted - there were 103 sharks here!

These are white-tipped sharks. They are carnivorous, but aren't aggressive towards humans. If we had been here for high tide, we could have swam with them, although I don't know about jumping into a canal with 100+ sharks! What makes this location ideal for the sharks and why are they here? The canal has a steady flow of water, which the sharks need to breathe through their gills. As the water is naturally flowing, they can stop moving and still breathe. It's the perfect canal for lazy sharks!

Next up, the best snorkeling with sea turtles ever! There must have been 40 or 50 of them there. As I was swimming and looking down at the sea turtles on the sea floor, I almost swam right into a sea turtle as it came up for a breath of air. They were everywhere! The turtles were so graceful to watch as they calmly glide through the water. They didn't mind humans swimming close to them, although we were all careful not to tough them. They are massive creatures and live relatively predator-free at this large size. The nearby sharks do not eat large sea turtles.

Our guide took some fantastic underwater pics!

Dashiell and Jonah jumped in first and found an octopus near shore, swam beside marine iguanas, and sea turtles. Imogen enjoyed watching them from the side while I fed Zander before joining the sea turtles.

The last highlight was seeing a penguin. Most of the penguins were breeding elsewhere, but we saw two solo penguins hanging out independently. My camera couldn't quite capture it well, unfortunately - but it was fantastic to see a penguin in the wild.

In this little cove is a penguin swimming. And perched on the lava rock is a blue-footed boobie.

It is hard to capture how incredible these lava fields were. I really haven't seen anything like it - you can imagine the lava hardening in the water and creating new land, with time passing over the centuries represented by the white lichen. The creatures are so dinosaur-like, it is almost like a period frozen in time. Dashiell and Imogen had a lot of fun running around and jumping between jagged-edged formations.

The Galapagos is definitely a treat to see, but hard to reach. Our return from Isabela Island to Mainland South America included taxi - boat - taxi - boat - bus - plane - taxi - and then to our car. When we finally reached our car, my thoughts were "home, sweet home!"

We have a quote from Imogen that she kept repeating and has become a metaphor for life, "You have to have a lollipop, if you want gum."

We have another one from Dashiell when we has about the same age. Stated in Santa Fe while I was removing some of the oil from a very greasy piece of pizza. We still use this metaphor to this day, "Enjoy the grease."

We are off to Cuenca next.