Galapagos pt 2

Isabella island

Today we went to an old volcano/caldera. We got a bus to the bottom of the volcano and then walked up to the edge of the caldera. It was a massive caldera - 10km in diameter. The 2nd biggest in the world (with the largest being in Hawaii) and the largest active one. To look across it was pretty cool! We walked a fair way around the edge to get to the lava field. The lava field had the same 2 types of lava I saw in Lanzarote on my volcano walks there. The flat stuff and the jagged stuff (the jagged stuff used to be flat lava but its been squashed up to form really jagged edges. They call it Ah-Ah lava as it hurts when you walk on it!

A bit of a geography lesson for you (and for me to remind myself!) A caldera is a massive crater. Its formed when a big high volcano collapses because of all the lava tubes coming out the side of it, it weakens the sides of the volcano and eventually collapses so you're left with a big caldera.

On the walk back to the bus, unfortunately, it chucked it down. We got very wet and very muddy! On the way back we tried to go and see some flamingos, but there was only one in the pool.

Then a quick shower was had before going back to the pink iguana again for happy hour cocktails and yummy empanadas :-) I did love that bar!! Its such an idyllic place - we watched beach volleyball being played, watched the sunset over the beach and the sea, drank cocktails and listened to live music - it was really ace.

That night, me and Marney decided to go out dancing with Zambo our guide, el Capitan and his shipmate. Well, it was a Thursday night and all the bars were deserted! It was quite funny. We had a few cocktails and found a club with about 6 people in and decided to stay there. We drank lots and lots of beer.

The next day we went for a walk on an island covered in iguanas. They were all building their nests and you could see sand flying everywhere and the occasional bit of head bobbing as they did their territorial displays when another female tried to build her nest too close to another. Its so amazing to see so many of them at such close quarters.

Then we went for our last snorkel of the holiday. It was fairly shallow water. We saw another white tipped reef shark. They were bigger than I was expecting, but Zambo said it might have been pregnant. We also saw a few more rays and some lobsters.

In the afternoon we got the boat to Santa Cruz. This is the most populated island, with about 20000 people living there. On the way there, a little way off from Isabella island, we saw a massive manta ray. It was amazing to see, it must have been 5 metres big, it was incredible. It was fishing and when they fish, they do big circular movements in the water so you can see their underbelly and its mouth and gills and everything. It came right up next to the boat, we couldn't have been in a better position. No-one had their cameras with us as we weren't prepared but just had an amazing time watching it. Incredible.

The night before in the bar, I asked el Capitan if I could drive the boat for a bit on the way there - it ended up that I drove it practically all the way there! For a good hour and a half - it was great fun! I was known as Capitana from then on :-) It was harder that I thought to keep a straight course, but I guess battling with the waves and the current, its bound to be tricky, but I loved it!

Santa Cruz, being the most inhabited is also the most touristy, with lots of tacky souvenir shops along the main street. In the evening, as we were walking to the restaurant to have our meal, we discovered the caterpillar ride! This was a car with lots of carriages that takes you round Santa Cruz town for about 15 minutes. It was great fun! In the evening we went out for a really nice meal of shrimp and a jacket potato :-) I'd been craving jacket potato so I was very happy I got one!

The next day was Tortoise day! We went to the Charles Darwin Research centre to begin with. We saw lots of baby tortoises again similar sizes to the ones we saw earlier in the week, but then we saw some really tiny ones who were only a couple of months old!

Then we went off round the reserve to find Lonesome George. For those of you who don't know about George, I'll fill you in:

When people first came to the island many years ago, they were mailny pirates and stuff stopping off at the islands for food. Tortoises were a good source of fresh food as they could live on the boats with them before they were slaughtered and because they're big creatures and very easy to catch being so slow, they were easy food. So easy that 3 species of tortoise in the Galapagos islands were completely wiped out by this.

Then, about 35 years ago or so, some a guy called George discovered Lonesome George on an island they thought was no longer populated by tortoises. Poor old George had been living on is own for a long long time, no-one knows how long. Anyway, they bought him to Santa Cruz (I think) to let him meet other tortoises, but he was having none of it. I guess being alone so long has made him a bit territorial.

As George is the last of his species of tortoise, sadly the species will die with George. The research centre was hoping to breed George with another species of tortoise from another island, one that is closely linked genetically. However, poor old George isn't interested in mating. They've tried many different techniques (that I won't go into here!) to try to help him along, but he's having none of it.

Zambo was saying the next thing they might have to do is use a technique that has apparantly worked well in China with the giant pandas there who were also having trouble mating. They sat the pandas down and made them watch videos of other pandas having sex to give them the idea to try it themselves! So I guess someones going to be making a 'tortoise porno' sometime soon for George! Haha! It would be funny seeing them try to sit him in front of a TV screen and pay attention!!

Anyway, that's a quick bit of background on George. We saw him in his enclosure. He was actually living in there with 2 females, but he's not interested in them at all.

Diego, another tortoise, on the other hand, is a completely different matter! He's a very randy old tortoise and humps every tortoise he can find. He's a Galapagos tortoise who was given back to the islands from San Diego zoo, hence the name. He was a funny guy! We also saw some big land iguanas that are red and yellow in colour. Then we saw the massive giant tortoises. They were huge!

From there we headed up to the highlands to try to see some giant tortoises in the wild. We saw 5 or 6 but none of the really really massive ones. Because its mating season, most of them had gone to the lowlands to lay their eggs. In the highlands, we also went into a lava tube. It was massive! I'd seen small ones in Lanzarote but this one was over 100m long and at least 20m high. In places it was really low and we had to crawl through small spaces, but then it opened out to this massive space!

In the afternoon, we went to Tortuga beach. I was very excited about this as Tortuga was the island in Pirates of the Caribbean! (simple things please simple minds, you know) We were supposed to go kiyaking, but that didn't work out so we went surfing instead. I was rubbish at surfing and failed miserably to stand up, but it was still fun trying!

For our farewell meal, we went to a nice restaurant that served fish on a lava stone so it kept cooking as it was really hot. I had shrimp... again... but it was lovely!

The next day was leaving day (sob). We had no activities planned as we had to leave at around 8am to drive across the island and over to the airport as we had a morning flight.

In the evening, I met up with my friend Toby from the GAP group I did in Bolivia and it was cool to have a few drinks and catch up with him... I managed to get through 8 cocktails that evening. Not my fault, it was 2-4-1 happy hour all night! About 20 minutes before I met Toby that night, I decided to get my nose pierced. I went wandering down to the local market and found a place that did it so I got it done :-) It was quite a funny experience as I was sat on a chair in this market with everyone walking past. Then this group of about 10 13year old kids came over and watched me! And its not exactly the most gentile of positions to be sat in to be watched when you have it done, head back with a big needle through my nose and my eyes watering lots!

The next day I had lots of odd jobs to do before going to the airport in the afternoon. I was hoping to go to the reptile centre and hold a great big boa constrictor, but I ran out of time which I was quite sad about, I'd been wanting to do that.

Anyway, my flights to Lima & Santiago went fine. I got to Santiago at 4am and my flight didn't leave until 11.20pm so I had a long day of waiting in the airport. I couldn't be bothered to go out and look around really as I had my bag with me, and I spent most of the morning asleep on some chairs trying to catch up on getting no sleep on the flights. A very nice and random surprise was bumping into my GAP tour guide from Bolivia, Barbara, in the airport! That made my day much more fun seeing her quickly! The rest of the day was spent trying to update my blog, generally wasting time and managing to lose my jumper :-(

The flight to NZ was fine and I got it at about 4am NZ time. I hung around the airport for a couple of hours and had some breakfast. The only place that was open with chairs at 5am was McDonalds so I had a yogurt and a cup of tea. I was served by a right queen! Asked if I wanted black, yellow or pink tea... not sure what pink tea is and I didn't try it. Not sure if it was real or whether the boy-george lookalike server was being comical. He was very amusing though and kept me entertained during my breakfast by singing 'If I were a rich girl'. Made me smile.