Southern Isabela

Isabela volcanoes are like magnets, it doesn’t matter what we do or where we look, our attention is helplessly driven back to them, to their beauty and perfection. We have had two days of Isabela volcanoes completely visible, since early in the morning until midnight and beyond, the moon light has made them always evident; their presence constantly perceived. In the morning we were close to Alcedo, and in the afternoon we walked a lava field in between Sierra Negra and Cerro Azul, which literally means, black hill and blue hill. We experienced being the only ones in southern Isabela; it was the island, its volcanoes, its creatures and the inhabitants of the Islander, nothing else, only the wind, the ocean and clear skies.

At Urbina we found enormous male iguanas spread out along the trail. Immense heads of white coral looked completely surreal at ten feet above sea level, surrounded by thorn bush and yellow cordias. Our planet is so dynamic, a never stopping machine, that less than six decades ago the whole area where we walked this morning was underwater, populated by lobsters, fish, sea worms, creatures of a different realm.

In the afternoon we photographed the pioneer plants that have colonized the young lava flows of Punta Moreno. There were lava cacti, red mangroves and Scalesias, and in the middle of nowhere, in an opening formed by a collapsed lava tunnel, we encountered three pink dots, flamingos, in the brackish waters of this out of the blue lagoon.

Beautiful Isabela was indeed, astonishing. Never far, also impressive and vast, Fernandina Island looked upon us from the west.