Galápagos Day 4: Isla Isabela

Having slept off the rather humbling night of poker as best as possible with a rather violently moving boat, we awoke on the morning of Day 4 to find ourselves back in civilization. We had docked at Puerto Villamil, a small town on the southern coast of Isla Isabela, the biggest island in the Galápagos. Isabela was notorious in the past for being the site of a rather cruel penal colony, but nowadays, it is more known for its many volcanoes and its tortoise breeding grounds, among other natural wonders!

We awoke early that day to a rather fantastic sight: a complete rainbow arcing over the sea (believe me - both ends were touching the ground!).And after enjoying a very delicious breakfast, we embarked out to the tiny village, hiking a bit to reach the Tortoise Breeding Center. Here, tortoises of all shapes and sizes roam around, rather slowly, eating, breeding, and sizing up the throngs of tourists that come to gawk at all things shelled and otherwise. We encountered many baby turtles:and, of course, the giant Galápagos Tortoises:
Believe us when we say GIANT - these things are rather massive:
...but they can be rather agile, even climbing on top of each other (I feel sorry for the one on the bottom)
The center was really interesting, and we learned quite a bit about tortoises: that their species name is elephantopus which refers to their elephant-like feet, that they can live to be 200 years old, and that they can mate for 20 hours at a time (yeah...). The males usually chase and chase the females, who don't want to mate (understandably?), but once they're caught, they're committed.

Our fascination with these giants indulged, we headed back to the boat to indulge our stomachs with the goodness of Edi's kitchen, and then headed off a short distance away by our trusty panga led by driver Brian to the Tintoreras Islands, a collection of tiny islands off the coast of Isabela. En route, we stumbled upon something that none of us expected: PENGUINS!

And this ain't no Antarctica neither. That's right, these are warm-weather penguins. They can be found in several parts of the Galápagos, most notably on the island of Bartolome (which we visited later), but there are also some here in the Tintoreras Islands. We watched them for several minutes, engrossed with the fact that we were feet away from these awesome animals! But soon we headed off to our landing site, which was a desert of jagged, hardened lava:
This type of sharp, spiky lava, according to our guide Enrique, is called "Ah-ah" lava, which is apparently Hawai'ian for the sound that one makes when you walk across it with bare feet! Thank goodness we did none of that. However, we did do plenty of walking around, where we found our friends the Iguanas hanging out in cliques.
We also found a spot that was an apparent resting ground for sharks...
...which apparently sea lions like to take advantage of to fool nearsighted tourists.
Nevertheless, there was plenty of other marine life to be had later on when we snorkeled off the coast of the Tintoreras islands for a good while. We will definitely be posting some underwater photos tomorrow, so check them out!

Thus concluded our excursions on and around Isabela. We returned to the boat fully intending to carry out our routine of showering, eating, and poker at night. However, our boat had to set sail immediately after everyone was on board, because apparently sailing to Santa Cruz from Isabela requires moving against a very strong current, which slows the boat down and makes the voyage extremely choppy! So, while Jennifer managed to shower before the boat started moving, my shower that afternoon was quite challenging, as I was thrown around the cubic foot of shower that we had, almost being ejected from the bathroom in all my naked glory (yeah, our bathroom door didn't close, so any violent motion from the boat would throw open the door!). All that motion in an enclosed space made my stomach feel terrible, and I had to take my first and only sea-sickness pill before dinner. But what a difference that pill made - I felt GREAT afterwards, although a bit loopy and drowsy (a side-effect of the medication). So eating dinner in a fog was one thing, but playing poker didn't work so well either - I was out before I knew it. But Jennifer, in her second night ever of playing, managed to win, trouncing the pros!

And thus with Jennifer victorious and me drunk on Dramamine, we both headed off to bed, praying that seat belts would magically appear on our beds to strap us down as the boat shuddered and plunged in the current all night as it churned its way towards Isla Santa Cruz, our next port of call.