Isabela & Fernandina Islands
We started our day navigating along the northwestern side of Isabela Island, a place that has the most active volcanoes of the whole archipelago. The sunrise at the volcanoes made us think for a moment that one of them was erupting.
After our breakfast many things happened; the first one was our official crossing of the Equator line. Shortly afterwards as soon as we arrived to our visitor’s site, we went on board our fleet of Zodiacs to explore Punta Vicente Roca, the territory of the Galápagos penguins, flightless cormorants, marine iguanas, fur sea lions and many more species. The ride was incredible, but after one hour of sunshine it was time to refresh ourselves in the calm turquoise waters of Punta Vicente Roca, so we organized a snorkeling trip and found a lot of sea turtles feeding. Some of us counted more than twenty. This was probably our best chance to be with sea turtles in the water during this trip, since this is one of the biggest feeding areas of green pacific sea turtles in the Island of Isabela.
Later in the day after a wonderful typical Ecuadorian buffet style lunch we went to the Island of Fernandina, which is one of the biggest islands. It is also a very pristine Island without any kind of introduced species and probably the youngest one in the whole archipelago, being approximately three hundred thousand years old. At this site we hiked among hundreds of marine iguanas, and sally light foot crabs. The walk was mainly in the intertidal zone through the territory of the Galápagos sea lions and the flightless cormorants. For the first time in the week we experienced a true walk on an open lava field surrounded by at least five volcanoes from Isabela and one from Fernandina.
All of us had very special moments during this day; these memories will stay in our hearts forever!
