Isabela

Arriving back in Puerto Ayora after a week on Isabela seemed like coming back to a huge city (not the case!). But that is what made Isabela so special: its remoteness, quietness and completely chilled out vibe. It's the largest island, but largely uninhabited with a single village, Puerto Villamil with a main road of beach sand.

...as experienced from our hotel balcony. 

Looking back on Puerto Villamil.

Main street Isabela and its pumping night life.

Every day we seemed to have new animal encounters ranging from watching turtles mate, snorkeling with eagle manta rays or watching white tip sharks basking. These photos barely touch the tip of the iceberg of some of these encounters.

Los Tuneles was formed by molten lava which cooled at different temperatures as it flowed into the sea, creating a lagoon maze of snorkeling paradise. The lagoon is only accessible by boat and is about 1 hour away from the village. After cruising the tunnels, we needed up moving to a smaller bay for our snorkeling. All previous turtle experiences where nullified as we snorkeled with, past, around dozens of huge turtles sometimes only an arms length away. The cherry was a school of manta rays swimming past just before we got back on the boat.

As our boat glided into the lagoon we were greeted by a friendly sea lion.

Just another endemic species, the blue footed boobies.

Typical examples of the lava tunnels throughout the lagoon.

A few minutes outside the dock at Puerto Villamil are a set of small rock islands called Los Tintoreras named (named after the white tipped sharks). This adventure was made up of another snorkel session and a guided walk around the rock viewing breeding grounds of the iguanas and sea lions. Although we were too early for the iguana season we did have the chance to find a 1 day old baby sea lion.

Shark spotting iguanas.

A nervous bird, a nervous crab, a bunch of basking white tip sharks, a male marine iguana, baby sea lions and many other marine iguanas made the trip spectacular.

The white and green lichen only grows on the south faces of the lava rocks.

So after chilling out on Isabela for a whole week of snorkeling and surfing we were somewhat reluctant to move on. Every day there our adventures where washed to dreams with a cold beer and an incredible seafood dinner. Much to our bemusement on several evenings we watched the cook leave the restaurant to buy ingredients after we had placed our order. The people here seem so friendly that they will never say no and everything is possible, even if it means delaying a whole outing by 30mins while they defrost some chicken to make a sanduche (which was actually ordered the previous evening).

But the feeding highlight was certainly the seafood volcano: a mountain of something like risotto surrounded by calamari, octopus, shrimp soaked in a wild mushroom cream sauce!

Walking out of town an endless beach stretches out.... after a long walk in the sun (take water) you eventually get to a good surf spot and a funky beach shack.

Some of the crazy vegetation on the incredible flamingo trail, which wasn't that incredible and only had 1 flamingo.

Seasons greetings füre dritte advent!!!