A Bulldog in the Show Me State: Day Six, Southern Isabella

Isabella is the largest island in the Galapagos, and it is shaped like a sea horse. It is formed from six volcanoes, which give it the odd shape. We spent the night anchored off Punta Espinoza, and early in the morning the ship sailed to Urbina Bay. In the morning we took a hike on the western coast of Isabela, where in 1954 almost one mile of the marine reef off the coast was uplifted almost instantaneously, by as much as thirteen feet. There are areas of coral reef that were left high and dry and are still present on the island. We had about a two mile hike to a black sand beach area, where we were able to hang out for awhile. Here's a seashell we saw along the beach.

We saw several of the huge land iguanas along the hike. These guys were just amazing, bigger than a house cat, and just lumbering along when we found them!

We saw about six or seven of them in varying shades of yellow and orange. The females are more dully colored, and the males get even brighter during mating season.

After the hike we came back to the ship for our lunch buffet. Just a little bit about the food: it was wonderful! There were breakfast and luncheon buffets each day, with snacks available in between. Dinner was a choice of beef or pork, seafood or vegetarian each evening. The cuisine was Ecuadorian based, but I think they cut back on the spices for us gringos. We were fed wonderfully while we were gone!

After a short siesta, we attended a lecture on Charles Darwin, and his specific work while in the Galapagos, and then we disembarked for a hike through the lava fields of Punta Moreno. This is an area of rough lava fields, where one bad move would cut you up pretty badly.

This stuff was rough!!

A picture of our group walking across the fields.

The boat in the distance.

This was a great blue heron that we spotted.

This little yellow warbler evaded my efforts pretty adeptly, but I think this is one of the better shots I got of it.

One of the volcanoes from a distance.

While walking through the lava fields, we would come up upon these little brackish water lagoons, which were home to a variety of birds. This was our first spotting of flamingos!