Southern Isabela Island
We started another beautiful day in paradise with a gorgeous, fresh morning walk at Urbina Bay. After a wet landing early in the morning we walked along the shore of an uplifted area full of huge astonishing coral heads that were pushed up to the surface from the sea bottom in the mid nineteen fifties. We walked for about two hours at a very relaxing pace, enjoying the magnificence of the scenery and wonderful stories about the natural history of the area and its wild life.
Southern Isabela also holds a very interesting and special group of human beings that established in the southern tip of the island, with a total population of about two thousand people who mainly live on fishing and a little on local tourism. During our morning walk we sighted several big and colourful male and female land iguanas. We walked through their nesting fields and had deep dissertations about their ways of life, reproduction, nesting habits, natural and introduced predators among other issues.
The plant life on the area was of big interest too. In the middle of the rainy season of Galápagos, even the thorny coastal vegetation zone has turned into an almost tropical forest! Beautiful Galápagos cotton plants with their bright yellow and red flowers were the favourite together with the Muyuyo flowers and the good looking but always dangerous poison apple fruit and trees. Bird watching was another highlight in the morning as the tiny land birds were very happily foraging and singing for us. Some of us swam on the beach to freshen up after this exciting hike.
Once back onboard we had an exquisite typical Ecuadorian lunch; and after a well-deserved siesta, we disembarked to hike over a great young lava flow at Punta Moreno. The highlights for the afternoon included pink Galápagos flamingos, and a great hike over an extensive black lava flow. Some of our troopers chose a Zodiac ride along the shoreline to view some of the largest marine iguanas in the archipelago, despite exciting weather conditions!
We started another beautiful day in paradise with a gorgeous, fresh morning walk at Urbina Bay. After a wet landing early in the morning we walked along the shore of an uplifted area full of huge astonishing coral heads that were pushed up to the surface from the sea bottom in the mid nineteen fifties. We walked for about two hours at a very relaxing pace, enjoying the magnificence of the scenery and wonderful stories about the natural history of the area and its wild life.
Southern Isabela also holds a very interesting and special group of human beings that established in the southern tip of the island, with a total population of about two thousand people who mainly live on fishing and a little on local tourism. During our morning walk we sighted several big and colourful male and female land iguanas. We walked through their nesting fields and had deep dissertations about their ways of life, reproduction, nesting habits, natural and introduced predators among other issues.
The plant life on the area was of big interest too. In the middle of the rainy season of Galápagos, even the thorny coastal vegetation zone has turned into an almost tropical forest! Beautiful Galápagos cotton plants with their bright yellow and red flowers were the favourite together with the Muyuyo flowers and the good looking but always dangerous poison apple fruit and trees. Bird watching was another highlight in the morning as the tiny land birds were very happily foraging and singing for us. Some of us swam on the beach to freshen up after this exciting hike.
Once back onboard we had an exquisite typical Ecuadorian lunch; and after a well-deserved siesta, we disembarked to hike over a great young lava flow at Punta Moreno. The highlights for the afternoon included pink Galápagos flamingos, and a great hike over an extensive black lava flow. Some of our troopers chose a Zodiac ride along the shoreline to view some of the largest marine iguanas in the archipelago, despite exciting weather conditions!
