Days 41 and 42: Sea Lions All Around, Blue Footed Boobies, and Penguins!!! Isabela Island

Days 41 and 42: Isabela
Sunday, November 11th
Galapagos, Island Isabela
Stayed at Hostel Insular
(Day 9 at the Galapagos)

Dear Obiwan,
The next two days we spent on Isabela, this is the biggest of the 3 islands in the Galapagos that have airports and where people live. ISABELA IS KNOWN FOR PENGUINS. However…this just breaks my heart to even write about this Obi…one of the (I think 7?!) volcanoes erupted in July this year…and killed a ton of the penguins that live here. 😦

But I was hopeful I’d see some and I hope they are thriving and will be back to normal population numbers one day soon.

We said our goodbyes to Tamara who as heading back home today and were sad to part. Now it was just me, Margaux, and Itay.

Our day began by a 7am boat to Isabela. The boat was SO BUMPY and so much fun. On the boat I met a mother from USA who was with her husband and they were visiting their daughter who LIVES ON ISABELA. She had a job opportunity there for school or something…and fell in love….and never left! We were talking about how amazing the Galapagos was and I mentioned how much I love diving….and the woman told me that she has dived probably over 150 times! She also shared how dangerous the Galapagos diving is, and told me that 5 years ago her son in law’s friend DIED diving by the most dangerous places to dive in the Galapagos! But I guess it was for work and they didn’t do the proper research and have the right rescue boats or something…but still, that’s so horrible!

Anywho, once we got there…it takes about an hour and a half, we were blown away by how beautiful it was! There were more sea lions and iguanas than people!

Welcome to Isabela:

Isabela is a lot smaller than Santa Cruz, population wise and town wise. Compared to Santa Cruz…you can walk around Santa Cruz finding stores and beaches and things to do for probably an hour. Here…it takes about 10 minutes. It was calmer and quieter and we were all grateful. We walked around and found a hostel (as always…first question by Itay is ‘do you have an oven?!) for only $15 USD a person for 2 nights!

We asked what to do and took the advice to rent bikes to go for free to Concha…something. This place you can supposedly snorkel and see lots of fish and sea turtles and sea lions. We paid 15$ for bikes and 2$ for snorkels…to find out the bike ride was 2 minutes…and we could have walked for free.

When we got there it was high tide, which supposedly means the best visibility…but we couldn’t see ANYTHING. Itay got out after a few minutes but me and Margaux wanted to look all over. As we were swimming a local offered to show me and Margaux and this older man who he was with around the Concha. He said he will show us all the animals! We followed him…and still saw nothing. And we almost got SUCKED OUT TO SEA! There was an incredibly strong current as we were all swimming that ended up having the tour guide hold onto the old man and me and Margaux just start getting pulled back soooo intensely and we were quickly about to be under the rope marking ‘don’t swim past here.’ We were swimming so hard and laughing at points at how little distance we were making…but finally, don’t worry Obi, we got past the current.

After making a loop and seeing nothing we got out. We returned our bikes, ate dinner, and went to bed.

Day 42: Monday, November 12th
Galapagos, Island Isabela
Stayed at Hostel Insular
(Day 10 at the Galapagos)

Today Obi we had to cut our days at Isabela short due to not having enough cash. NO ONE TOLD US THERE WERE NO ATMS ON ISABELA. There were SO MANY on Santa Cruz. So instead of 3 nights and 4 days, we had to leave today. BUT we also were told that San Cristobal is the most beautiful so we did not mind at all getting there sooner!

But not before going to one of the main attractions on Isabela- Los Tuneles!

They are these BEAUTIFUL tunnels that were formed by lava many years ago. And as we were boating around…we saw PENGUINS!

Here are pictures from our amazing tour of Los Tuneles!

h! Also, Obi watch these 2 videos, the first is a sea lion making his lovely sounds to come say hi and snuggle with these other two sea lions. BUT the second video is heart breaking, saddest rejection of ALL TIME: