Southern Isabela
Today we were part of a worldwide event. When anchored at Urvina Bay, the Leonids’s meteor fragment shower beckoned us to the sun deck of our ship at four in the morning to enjoy this show of nature.
We asked our guests if they wanted to be woken up to join us and the response was massive. More than half of our guests were up eagerly looking to the sky waiting for these meteor fragments to show. We all saw about four good-sized fragment shoot across the sky. Meanwhile we had a naturalist teaching us about the constellations. We all stayed up until dawn and enjoyed a very different early morning type of stargazing.
After breakfast we wet-landed at the beach in Urvina and enjoyed a great walk with several good looking land iguanas. This piece of Alcedo Volcano’s shores was uplifted several feet up from the bottom of the sea in 1959 because of strong volcanic activity of the area. Due to the exposed sandy areas, land iguanas that lived around the area moved in to take advantage of the loose sand to nest and to dig their burrows. There’s a beautiful arrangement to this place – it’s truly an iguana paradise.
The afternoon outings included an adventure walk on the rugged lava flows of Punta Moreno and a Zodiac cruise was included for guests that wanted to relax a bit. The brackish water lagoons of the area showed a nice array of endemic pioneer plants as well as some species of lagoon birds that live in the area.
Four adult, very pink wild flamingoes, some pintail ducks and a couple of moorhens were a highlight on the walk.
Crossing the barren lava flows of Punta Moreno was a good challenge for all of our guests. After the walk, our Zodiac captains drove us around the coasts of Punta Moreno.
