Note: I am posting this from Isla Isabela, a lovely island with lousy internet. Consequently I can not include a lot of pictures, but check the Facebook page as I will load more pictures up there as internet access permits.

Rock ‘n Roll All Nite

You drive us wild, we’ll drive you crazy!

Remember that bit in the last post about the roll in the Port Ayora anchorage on Santa Cruz and us not having an easy stern anchor? Well that oversight is one I will continue to castigate myself for until I can finally overpay for a decent stern anchor in some faraway port. Because we REALLY needed it in Port Ayora.

Eventually Kathy and I took to sleeping across our bed so we didn’t get tossed onto each other all night when the boat fell the wrong way across the waves and began rocking violently in the middle of the night. Will had the worst of it as he sleeps in the bunk room and there was no real way for him to sleep across the boat rather than lengthwise. Nobody slept well. We even tried to find an anchor in town we found two, both WAY too large and harder to use than the spare anchors we carry already. Live and learn is the name of the game out here.

Tortuga Bay

On the way out of town in Port Ayora is a path one can follow to Tortuga Bay. The park service has build a really nice stone path through the scrub and cacti down to the water. Its a bit of a hike, a couple of kilometers, but the walking is easy. The park service in general has done an excellent job with these sorts of paths, they make the park areas accessible and do a good job protecting the off path areas from violation by clumsy tourists.

This bay consists of two distinct beach areas. The first stretch of beach is wild surf and strong undertow. It is very popular with surfers but is not recommended for swimming due to the dangerous rips and currents. It is a gorgeous white sand beach and the kilometer walk along it to the other beach is lovely on firm sand. The beach is backed by dunes and grass and dotted with sea turtle nests at this time of year. Observers mark the nests with flags to protect them from accidental damage and to help ensure better survival of the hatchlings.

At the end of this long white beach are some rocks and trees leading up to the mangrove cove on the other side. And marine iguanasLOTS of iguanas piled all over each other on the rocks and in the shade.

The second cove is supposed to be a good snorkeling cover where one can see white tipped reef sharks, turtles and other wild life. While the water was calm and flat we must have caught it on a bad day because the water was so murky as to make snorkeling useless. Not that we didn’t try, but we couldn’t see anything. On the other hand Will, who hates snorkeling, rented a kayak for an hour and paddled all over the bay. He saw a number of the sharks from the kayak as well as some turtles. It was still a nice place and very pretty though we did leave a little disappointed by water clarity at least someone saw a shark.

Almeurzos and Huge Beers

One of the more pleasant discoveries in the Galapagos was the Ecuadorean national beer. Cleverly named Pilsner all one needs to at almost any restaurant is ask for a cerveza grande and out comes and ice cold beer that is something like 600 ml a little over 20 ounces for around $3.50. Most places only carry the local beer, but that’s OK because it is always really cold and very refreshing and who wants to spend $5.00 or more on an imported Budweiser?

Another $3.50 discovery in Port Ayora is the Almeurzo, which is a fixed price lunch menu available in the restaurants off the main tourist strip. For around $3.50-$4.00 many of the restaurants provide a lunch with soup, some sort of meat entree, rice or similar and juice a filling, really good lunch. Finding this is a cheapskate’s dream, especially when most of our food on board can’t be easily replaced in the Galapagos for anywhere near what we paid for it. Since we’ve got a three+ week ocean passage ahead of us it is a wonderful excuse to go out to lunch.

And it’s so cheap you can easily give your juice to the kids and justify a crisp cold cerveza grande

Lava Tubes and the Tunnel of Love

Much of the ground in the Galápagos isn’t quite as solid as it seems. Almost all of the islands here have been extruded by undersea volcanoes, some of which are still active. Much of the landscape is obvious lava flows with broad swaths of rippling rock that is now stippled with cacti and scrub-like plants. Even the higher regions with their more verdant foliage are still sitting on top of lava flows.

When lava flows sometimes the outside of the lava cools first while the inside continues to flow. Eventually the molten lava flows out which leaves a tube of cooled stone hollowed out behind. Lava tubes are all over the Galápagos.

Some of the tubes are collapsed and worn when they come near the ocean (more on that when I post about Isabela!). Others are completely hidden under accumulated soil and growth and vegetation. And a few are still intact except in a few spots where they’ve opened to the surface and can be accessed.

Outside the town of Bellavista is such a place. On a private farm there is access to some of the longer lava tubes that are accessible from the surface. The full extent of the tubes near this spot is somewhere around 2.5 kilometers. The tube we were able to explore was just under one kilometer in lenght.

The tubes feel like caves except they aren’tbecause the are long and windy and show signs of their formation in hot lava. Large enough to easily accommodate a subway train in them, the high ceilings and rough walls are dotted with condensation and moisture dripping down from above. Someday I need to hire a poet or something to help me with my descriptions, but the best I can come up with is that these things were justcool.

Without a guide, we brought our own flashlights and descended into the Tunnel of Love as a plaque at the entrance proclaimed it. Without a guide we didn’t get a lot of information about the geology/volcanology behind some of the formations but that made them no less interesting. We’ve found that in many cases we’re happier without a guide; when we entered the tubes a group with a Spanish speaking guide was just in front of us. They very quickly zipped off into the darkness. On the other hand we took our time exploring the tunnel, checking out the cracks and fissures and interesting shapes and reflections from our lights.

The other end of the tunnel was almost a let down, it was such an interesting place we wanted to just keep going. When we got back above ground though it was very apparent how the ground had been shaped by some of the tube collapses, and certainly walking around in the dark at night might drop you right back into them!

Cheapskate Tourist’s Note: This site is a good example of how doing a little research can get you an experience that is not only better, but much cheaper. Many of the tour agencies on Via Charles Darwin would arrange a trip to the Lava Tubes for about $25.00 per person. We took our own cab ($9.00 round trip) and paid the $3.50/person admission for a total of $23.00 for the same excursion we could have spent $100 on if we paid an agency to arrange it. And we didn’t get bundle through the tunnels at someone else’s pace.