Ecuador - Day 5 & 6

Isabella

We travelled to Isabella Island on Monday. We left at 7:00 a.m. and had 2 hour boat ride. We were a little aprehensive about the boat ride after our experience the day before. But the ride wasn't too bad (though Emily had taken something for motion sickness.) We arrived at the beautiful and sunny Isabella Island.

We went to a place called the wall of tears. This was a prison in 1946. From what we could understand from our guide, they had the prisoners build this wall and left the prisoners here to fend for themselves.

View from the top of the wall.

View from the top of a lookout we climbed.

Freshwater stream on Isabella. We were told this is where the prisoners got their drinking water from.

This is a lagoon on Isabella.

A Galapagos penguin. Isn't he cute?

We also stopped at an island that is mostly inhabited by iguanas, though we also saw more sea lions there as well. In the waters surrounding the island is a white shark resting place. We snorkled here as well, but fortunately did not see any sharks. Although we would have liked to from the boat. Darin saw a stingray and a sea lion tapped him on the foot as he was snorkeling.

Mountain Tour
Tuesday we took a highland tour of the island of Santa Cruz. Our first stop was at Los Gemelos (The Twins) which is a place where the ground basically collapsed and there are two giant craters. It is quite a sight. Our next stop was at a ranch that is right next to a national park. We hiked on a trail and saw quite a few tortoises. Our guide also told us about the different vegetation. We drove up a very steep hill next and then hiked up another steep set of stairs for a spectacular view of the ranch and also of the ocean and islands. Next we hiked through an underground lava tunnel. We had a late lunch and headed back to the hotel.

One of the twins.

One of the many tortoises we saw on our hike. This male was approximately 120 years old. Our guide was able to tell by the number of rings they have on their shells.

This is at the entrance of the lava tunnel, before we embarked on our hike through it. It was 400 meters long.

Sorry this post has been so delayed, we've had limited access to the internet. Jonathan & Irena's wedding is tomorrow and then we are off to Mindo for two days before we fly home. We will probably not be able to post anymore pictures until we're home next Wednesday. We'll see you soon!