Isabela and Fernandina Islands
Beautiful sunrise, blue sky and tall volcanoes: indeed we are in the westernmost part of the archipelago, where all kinds of surprises await us. For the first part of the morning, the ocean was flat and a mysterious mist covered the horizons right until the time we crossed the equator line, and at that point, the volcanoes rose from the mist and showed their magnificent shield shapes and pure black basaltic lava flows.
Common dolphins had delighted us early in the morning, and ocean sunfish and dozens of green sea turtles shared our Zodiac ride along Punta Vicente Roca. Snorkeling in these cooler but richer waters exposed us to even more marine turtles and a few puffer fish and razor surgeonfish.
The afternoon found us on Fernandina, the youngest island, where we had the option of a longer walk over fresh lava, formed only a few hundred years ago. The tidal pools housed several damselfish and hermit crabs, while marine iguanas covered every spot along the shoreline, where they were warming up in gregarious groups. We saw flightless cormorants and Galápagos penguins, storm petrels and shearwaters, larger shield volcanoes and smaller parasitic cones. We thought we had all we could get in the wonderland of the western realm of the Galápagos – but something special was yet to show up in the middle of Bolivar channel: a large pod of bottlenose dolphins were hunting and seemingly awaited us to enjoy a wonderful sunset together.
Beautiful sunrise, blue sky and tall volcanoes: indeed we are in the westernmost part of the archipelago, where all kinds of surprises await us. For the first part of the morning, the ocean was flat and a mysterious mist covered the horizons right until the time we crossed the equator line, and at that point, the volcanoes rose from the mist and showed their magnificent shield shapes and pure black basaltic lava flows.
Common dolphins had delighted us early in the morning, and ocean sunfish and dozens of green sea turtles shared our Zodiac ride along Punta Vicente Roca. Snorkeling in these cooler but richer waters exposed us to even more marine turtles and a few puffer fish and razor surgeonfish.
The afternoon found us on Fernandina, the youngest island, where we had the option of a longer walk over fresh lava, formed only a few hundred years ago. The tidal pools housed several damselfish and hermit crabs, while marine iguanas covered every spot along the shoreline, where they were warming up in gregarious groups. We saw flightless cormorants and Galápagos penguins, storm petrels and shearwaters, larger shield volcanoes and smaller parasitic cones. We thought we had all we could get in the wonderland of the western realm of the Galápagos – but something special was yet to show up in the middle of Bolivar channel: a large pod of bottlenose dolphins were hunting and seemingly awaited us to enjoy a wonderful sunset together.
