It was nice to wake up in the bay of Punta Moreno, surrounded by towering volcanoes. It was a dry landing on black volcanic larva – Franklin was quite stern in his instructions about paying attention to where you walk as it does not take much to fall into a crevice or step on sometime. It was like walking on the surface of the moon. There was a couple of lagoons in which we saw some flamingoes, pelicans and a Galapagos shark. We returned to the boat for lunch and set sail to Bahia Elizabeth.
We arrived at Bahia Elizabeth around 2. We boarded the zodiac and spent a couple of hours snaking around the mangrove filled lagoons. There were quite a few flightless cormorants, pufferfish, penguins and turtles. We stopped in a little enclave and sat there in silence for 10 minutes watching the many sea turtles glide in. Thankfully there were few mozzies – a benefit of the very little rain that the Galapagos gets. Our peace was disturbed by another group of tourists and their very descriptive guide.
We spent the night anchored in Bahia Elizabeth before heading to Urbina Bay at 5am (still on Isabela Island). We arrived at Urbina Bay just before breakfast. We were all in the zodiac at 7.45am for a wet landing on the nearby beach. We had a short walk around the bay that was notable for being underwater until 1954 when the whole bay lifted by 8ft. We saw plenty of finches, cuckoos, some tortoises and for the first time, land Iguanas. We got to snorkel (minus flippers) off the beach before being back on board by 10am for our journey through the narrow straights between Isla Fernandina and Isabela to the beach of Punta Espinosa.
The journey was magic. Sitting up front of the boat in the sun reading while watching Manta Rays, Bottlenose Dolphins, Brother Whales, turtles and the odd clicking Frigate. We timed our arrival for low tide so we could snorkel at a nearby beach where the Marine Iguanas would be in water feeding off the algae. It was incredibly special swimming amongst literally hundreds of Iguanas – often using their long claws to cling to algae covered rocks at the bottom of the sea while feeding. The abundance of fish and turtles feeding at the same time were almost, although not quite, ignored.
In the afternoon we crossed back to Punta Espinosa for a walk around the headland. The number of Marine Iguanas warming themselves in the sun was amazing. At times they formed trains of Iguanas, nose to tail all on top of each other. The quiet was punctuated every now and then as an Iguana ‘sneezed’ out a projectile of salt water. We were also fortunate to see a couple of Galapagos hawks feeding on a sea lion placenta and also a couple of flightless cormorants building a nest out of seaweed.
We sailed to Tagus Cove for the night – a well known mooring for the many pirate ships that were prevalent in the area in the 1600’s. I was walking along the deck after dinner when I noticed a 6ft Galapagos shark gliding past the boat. Quite spooky. It was also the first night we stood outside having a look at the stars – being so close to the equator it was possible to see 80% of both the southern and northern hemisphere stars