Sunday, December 30, 2018- Isabela Island: Las Tintoreras and Punta Moreno

Sunday, December 30, 2018- Isabela Island: Las Tintoreras and Punta Moreno   

The boat fired up its main motors and weighed anchor just before midnight.  It didn’t take long before we could hear things crashing onto the floors as the motion of the boat and seas caused items that had been unpacked and placed on top of dressers to find a position of maximal entropy i.e. on the floor.  

From our cabin situated aft on the main deck, the main engines were quite a bit louder than the generators which we had been accustomed to hearing up until then.  Ben’s iPhone decibel meter was reading about 80dB, or about the same noise level as a running garbage disposal.  As the catamaran’s hull sliced through the waters between Santa Cruz and Isabela Islands, it rocked moderately- enough to roll your head from left to right if you laid on your back on the bed.  The motion of the seas was more pronounced as reported by the passengers in the upstairs staterooms.  Most people had a difficult time falling asleep given the conditions.  So much for sleeping like babes.

When 5:15AM rolled around, we were awakened by the sounds of wild birds chirping and Nadine’s voice announcing that it was time to wake up and get ready for our early morning excursion.     We emerged from our staterooms bleary eyed, and found a tray of fruits (bananas, oranges, apples) on the bar counter.  

A line formed at the coffee maker which grinds and fresh brews espresso, and can make a Cafe Americano with a press of a dedicated button.  Marcelo, the bartender, eventually brought out a tray, onto which he dumped a bunch of individual serving packages of Oreo’s cookies.  

It was pre-dawn when the birds started chirping in our staterooms, but by our scheduled excursion time of 6:00 AM, the sun was above the horizon, but obscured by moderately heavy cloud cover.  It looked like it wanted to rain much of the morning, but it didn’t actually rain on us.     

We boarded the Zodiacs with our hiking shoes and cameras and headed to a site called Las Tintoreras, which is apparently a tiny islet just off Isabela Island.  During the approach, we motored very close by several rocks covered with adult blue footed boobies. It was very difficult to get a decent picture because the light was quite dim between it being just a little after sunrise, and the heavy cloud cover overhead.  But, we saw them pretty up close, and they were a squakative bunch.  The light blue color of their feet is quite remarkable. 
    

A whole lotta blue footed boobies.

Those blue feet are not retouched or photoshopped.

For dry landings, our Zodiac pilots maneuver the bow of the Zodiacs up against a suitable height lava ledge or boulder, and then maintain constant forward throttle to keep the bow pressed against the ledge or rock.  A boat handling assistant then steps from the bow onto the rock or ledge, and that assistant then helps each passenger step from the bow of the Zodiac onto the ledge or boulder one at a time.  Bulky international orange blocky life jackets are worn during all Zodiac transfers.  These are removed either before or after stepping off the Zodiac onto the landing site.  

Galapagos Handshake at work.

The landing site at Las Tintoreras was well developed with steps and a small sitting shelter.  You had to watch your step because there were piles of sea lion poop scattered around the landing like land mines, and a marine iguana had staked out the area under one of the sitting benches as his personal space.   Las Tintoreras is named after the white tipped reef sharks that can been seen cruising through a flooded fissure in the lava.  This narrow fissure is open to the ocean, and this particular islet has quite a large population of Galapagos marine iguanas.  The National Parks trails are marked with black and white stakes, and the trail is largely paved with decomposed lava rock and coral, so it was easy to negotiate with normal walking shoes, or sandals.  

Panorama of aging lava bed at Las Tintoreras

There are lots of sally lightfoot crabs perched on rocks around the waterline.  The bright red, white and blue colors of the adults of these crabs is hard to miss.  Juveniles are camouflaged with black to dark brown colors that blend in with the lava rocks.  There are also quite a few Galapagos sea lions with their pups on this island.  

Sea Lion calesthenics

It was impossible not to see more marine iguanas and sally lightfoot crabs than you cold possibly count at this site.  It is also the most frequently visited site in the National Park because it is easily reached by small boats from Santa Cruz and other inhabited islands with hotel based eco-tourists.    

Sally lightfoot crab

There were frequent piles of small to medium sized juvenile marine iguana on the beaches.  Nadine explained this was because the smaller marine iguanas pile up together for warmth overnight, and then spread out to go hunting for algae once the sun has warmed them sufficiently. 

Piles of juvenile marine iguanas

There are many larger, more colorful males occupying positions of dominance around the beaches of the island.  It was not uncommon to see these large and more colorful males nodding their heads and puffing up their throats to warn off potential competition. 

    

Male in breeding colors

There were a few Galapagos sea lions laying about on the trail, as well as some large male marine iguanas. These animals forced us to take minor detours off the trail to maintain the 2m mandatory stand-off distance.     

When we got to the Tintoreras fissure, a large green sea turtle was cruising through the narrow and long channel. 

Torguga in the Tintoreras fissure

No sharks were visible today, but the walls of the fissure were lined with smaller marine iguanas and sally lightfoot crabs.  There were other schools of fish swimming through the fissure.   We encountered a second group of 8 tourists lead by another guide, who appeared to be following the same itinerary as we were on the mono-hulled Galaxy I boat.  We only passed briefly as they were doing the tour in the opposite direction from our route.   

We reboarded the Zodiacs, which took us back to our boat. We had breakfast waiting for us, consisting of fresh papaya, other fruits, french toast, sausages and scrambled eggs.

  

As we had breakfast, the ship weighed anchor and started motoring around the south end of Isabela Island to our second landing site. Most of us took a deserved nap after breakfast, but because the prevailing winds and currents hit the Galapagos from the south, this lead to our boat being battered by swells across the beam.  This caused the boat to rock and pitch quite severely. 

We had a snorkeling safety orientation and snorkeling equipment check out scheduled for 11am.  At first, Nadine thought she would have to reschedule the meeting until after lunch because several passengers were stricken by sea sickness.  Those who weren’t seasick congregated in the boat’s briefing room, which is a windowless compartment in the bow of the boat, just ahead of the staterooms.  As Nadine gave the briefing, more passengers fell victim to sea-sickness in the windowless room, which was ideally situated to maximize the sea-sickness potential of a space.  By the end of the briefing, fewer than half of the passengers were not at least partially stricken with sea-sickness. Between the three physicians on board, and all their drugs, a lot of medications were passed out and administered orally, sublingually and transdermally to the victims.     

The weather had deteriorated to a low cloud cover partially obscuring the horizon for a while, exacerbating sea-sickness inducing conditions as the boat raced across the southern coast of Isabela Island.  

The boat then turned northward at the southwest corner of the island.  At that point, the seas turned from broadside to following, smoothing the motion of the boat tremendously. 

  

The call for lunch came out over the intercom, but only half the passengers felt well enough to have anything to eat. Lunch was a vegetable soup followed by a buffet offering cheese and spinach enchiladas, grilled zucchini, and Brussels sprouts.  Towards the end of lunch, more passengers filtered into the dining room and had lunch as they recovered from sea-sickness.   

The ship dropped anchor at Punta Moreno just before 2:00PM.  We then donned our wet suits and reboarded the Zodiacs for a “Deep Water Snorkeling Excursion”, which means we enter the water from the Zodiacs, exit the water back into the Zodiacs, and never stand on the bottom.  This is in contrast to a shallow water snorkeling excursion, where we walk into the water from a beach with our snorkeling gear on.  

The snorkeling site was along a rocky shoreline.  The water felt refreshingly cool when we first plunged in and felt the surge of seawater filling our wet suits.  The water was probably 30’ deep where we jumped in.  Then, we worked our way closer to the rocky shoreline, following sea turtles, parrot fish, Mexican hog fish, wrasse, sergeant major fish, salema and snapper fish.  There were even a few penguins swimming about through our group of snorkelers. 

Mexican Hogfish

Sea cucumbers were a primary export of the Galapagos.

Pod of Whidbey Whales

Lots of tortuga feeding on vegetation.

Peruvian rays, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and star fish were on the bottom. The Zodiacs drifted along with us, ready to assist if needed.  Terri and Riley had elected not to join the fun in the water, watching from the sundeck of the boat.  Mark B found several lava tube caves and lots of interesting fish along the rocky ledges.  

We saw flightless cormorants, marine iguanas and pelicans on the rocky shore.  The water was not particularly clear, but clear enough to see to at least 30’. Oddly, there were areas near the shoreline that were much warmer than others, raising the possibility of drainage from shallow pools inland, or even geothermal sources of warmer water along the shoreline.   We were in the water nearly an hour before we climbed back into the Zodiacs via a ladder secured over the side tubes.  

We hosed off with warm water on the swim platforms, and then got dressed for our dry landing excursion for the afternoon to explore the lava flows of Punta Moreno. 

Our Zodiac pilots showed off their boatmanship in threading the very narrow and zig-zagging channel to the Punta Moreno landing site.  One portion of the channel was so narrow and shallow that they had to turn the zodiacs around, lift the outboard motors partially out of the water in reverse to pull the Zodiac through the channel.  As we approached the landing area, a Galapagos penguin was swimming around and chasing fish for breakfast. 

The disembarkation point this time was a very rugged and undeveloped rough volcanic ledge.  It was tricky to find safe footing and places for hand holds because the lava was quite jagged and broken up in places. 

The trail was marked with the same black and white stakes, but we were basically trekking across an irregular and broken up lava flow demonstrating areas of collapse, fracturing, and rope lava formations.  Drake had come ashore with us, but was the most severely affected by the sea-sickness.  He elected to wait on dry land at the landing site with water to rehydrate himself.

To our surprise, we encountered a brackish pond in the middle of the lava flow, looking like an oasis in the middle of what was otherwise a moonscape of lava, punctuated with a rare lava cactus and silver barked leafless incense trees poking up from cracks in the lava.  These incense trees or Palo-Santo trees, are related to frankincense and myrrh.  Palo-Santo means holy stick because the branches are burned for incense.

Lava Cactus- a pioneer species

A brackish oasis in the lava field.

Just past this pond was a second pond that was larger, and contained several Flamingos, including one particularly pink male in prime breeding plumage.  Nadine had hinted that there might be a surprise during this excursion to see “lava”, and she was certainly right.
  

We rejoined Drake at the landing site and he did reboard the Zodiacs with us as we did a sunset shoreline Zodiac ride.  We saw marine iguanas, penguins, sea lions, sally foot crabs, albatross, boobies, turnstones, and other wildlife living along the rocky shoreline.  

Exfil with SEAL precision.

Galapagos sea lions, penguins and marine iguanas, oh my!

Sunset penguin party coming right up!

Someone's Booby-trapped the penguin hide-away.

I got penguins on my mind.

Marine iguana Pride Rock

Ben and Mark just soaking it all in.

We then reboarded the boat and the crew put away the Zodiacs and rinsed off our snorkeling gear on the swim platform.  
  

We got cleaned up for the evening for the Captain’s reception, in which we were introduced to the Captain and his two assistant pilots, engineers, hotel staff and kitchen staff, and of course our Zodiac handlers and bartender.  They served us a cocktail to toast with before dinner.  All of the boat’s staff were from Ecuador, with many living in Guayaquil, and a couple from more inland.  

Nadine considers herself a Galapaganian, having lived in the Galapagos for 35 years after leaving France and never looking back.    We received our briefing for Monday’s schedule, which again starts off with a 5:30 AM wake up call and 6:00AM Zodiac ride excursion through Elizabeth Bay, the narrowest part of Isabela Island, situated between two huge volcanic caldera, including the largest in the world.  

The boat will then reposition to Urbina Bay where we will make our first wet landing excursion, and shallow water snorkeling excursion.   

We were offered a choice of beef, fish, chicken or vegetarian for tonight’s captain’s reception, but everyone picked the fish except Terri, who went for the vegetarian entree.  The fish was snapper with a caper sauce, served with cauliflower, carrots, and a roasted pepper and tomato soup.  Dessert was a sponge cake with caramel and chocolate topping.   

John, Price, Ciara and Konrad played a card game called BANG! after dinner as the boat weighed anchor and motored to Elizabeth Bay, our moorage site for the evening.  The waters were much calmer than they had been earlier in the day.  Anchoring in Elizabeth Bay produced quiet (no main engines running), and gently rocking ideal sleeping conditions.