Isabela Island - Day One

Isabela Island Day One

I forgot to mention that last evening after dinner we walked around the main pier and we saw tiny sharks in the water!! It was dark out and they are attracted to the lights of the pier. It was pretty neat.

Ok where did I leave off?  Oh yes...after dinner we chilled out in our hotel room - goofing off and watching Animal Planet in Spanish.  In the morning I successfully negotiated, in Spanish, a late check-out (9am is too early, am I right??).  The free breakfast was great!  They served us juice, watermelon, yogurt, granola, scrambled eggs, and this pressed cheese toast thingy...great way to start the day.

Eventually we headed down to the main pier to catch the 2pm public ferry to Isabela Island.  We had bought our tickets ($30) in advance so after finding the right checker-in-er stand we found a little shade and waited.  Then we lined up for the bag inspection and waited in the sun.  We chatted with a nice couple from Slovenia while in line.  The reason for the inspection of bags is to make sure no seeds, plants, etc accidentally get transported between islands...they are very protective of the ecosystems here.  Oh and they also checked everyone's temp again and squeezed a bunch of hand sanitizer on hands (for coronavirus).  Then we loaded into a water taxi (50 cents) that took us to the ferry.  We were pleasantly surprised by the ferry...it had big cushy benches and a roof so there was shade.  It was a bit of a hassle but you know what?  Sometimes you've got to be uncomfortable to experience cool things.  We just put our ear buds in and tuned out to audio-books and music.

Two hours later we reached the town of Puerto Villamil on Isabela.  After another water taxi to the dock ($1) we got more hand sanitizer (no temp check) and paid their municipal tax ($10).  Not too much to say about the rest of the day...saw a ton of sea lions and iguanas by the dock, took taxi ($2), checked into our hostel (meh), watched the sunset from the beach (yay), we played on some black volcanic rock, and had a boring dinner.  

Today's Appreciate List:

• Free breakfast at hotels
• Not usually having to carry wads of cash (there are only a handful of ATMs on the islands plus $20 is a big bill here so we had to bring two week's of cash in small bills)
• The Moon (it's so beautiful and seems to look much bigger from here...is that because we're on the equator??)
• Hats (it's hard to not feel like a dufus in our wide brim hats but hey, we're on the equator so it's required equipment for us gringos)

Tomorrow we are going to hike into a volcano.  ¡Hasta mañana!