Galápagos Islands - Isla Isabela

A little bit sleepy we boarded the ferry at 6:30 in the morning going from Santa Cruz to Isabela. Before you get on the actual boat you have to pay dollars: a fee to use the harbour and to get a short transfer to the slightly bigger boat 🙄 It's not about the cost but mostly just annoying that you've got to pay a dollar around every corner. On the boat Julia got very badly seasick and after halfway needed to change seats so she'd sit in the back where she could see the horizon and also there's more fresh air. Generally the boat services have been not very comfortable and too costly for what they offer 🤷‍♂️ But they're basically the only option except for flying which takes a lot longer.
Besides that the ride was uneventful and we saw glimpses of turtles and rays around the boat. When we arrived we needed to pay an entrance fee of 10$ for the island. There was directly a little boardwalk after the harbour that led to "Concha de Perla", a beautiful little laguna with lots of sea lions and marine iguanas. Occasionally and if you're really lucky, you can even see a Galápagos penguin. We didn't go in to snorkel but walked the 1.5km into town to check in to our hotel. It's interesting that they have adjusted their times to the ferry service, so check-in starts at 10am but checkout needs to be completed by 9am. We just dropped our luggage and then went for a little walk through town to the nearby Flamenco laguna. We didn't have a lot of time because our tour started at 11:30 but we were lucky to spot some intensely pink coloured birds 🥰 With the camera I managed to get them close enough to see the details. After a few great shots we went back to the hotel and arrived there shortly before the departure.

Our today's tour brought us to the tunnels, a structure of volcanic origin spanning over a large area. Between the volcanic rocks there are a lot of mangrove trees and many animals use the rocks as a natural barrier giving them safety against larger predators. Directly after we went into the water there were a lot of sea turtles eating seagrass and completely unbotherd by our presence 🐢 In the rock crevices were small and big blacktip sharks hiding 🦈 We also saw octopus 🦑 and a lot of other marine wildlife 😍 On the tour we talked to an Austrian couple who are also travelling for half a year. They were really nice and the time of travel went by pretty quickly chatting and exchanging about past and upcoming travels. Then we went to our second snorkel spot where we saw 7 seahorses but no penguins... They hang out on the rocks there sometimes but you have to be lucky. Then we had a little lunch on the boat before continuing on through the narrow tunnels where our boat was a pretty tight fit. Or at least it looked like it 😁 We were allowed to sit in front of the boat for this part of the trip which was pretty cool.
At the end of the tunnels we set anchor and went ashore to visit a (currently very small) colony of the blue footed boobies. They aren't unique to Galápagos, we saw them already in Mexico on this trip, but there is the largest amount and they are prominently on almost all of the souvenirs. We were lucky to see a single one pretty close that was posing for the photos and a cute couple doing a mating dance 🥹😍

Afterwards it was time to head back to the town. There was still half an hour of daylight left so we went back to the Concha de Perla to snorkel. But besides some pufferfish and smaller ones the water was pretty calm ☺️ So we went back to the hotel to refreshen up and then go see the sunset from a beach bar 🥰 At dinner we met the Austrian couple again and chatted a bit more but we were super tired and have to get up 04:30 for the ferry 😵Read more