Galapagos-Isle Isabella & volcanic crater

volcano crater
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Nov. 22, Tuesday:  This was the day several of us arranged for a day trip to the Volcano.  The mountain dominates the western sky of the town of Puerto Villamil on Isabella Island where we dropped anchor today.   This was the volcano that had erupted a few weeks ago, Sierra Negro.   

It took about an hour's ride on dirt roads back into the interior of Isabella Island to get to the crater.  We saw everything from scrub to desert to rainforest- there are many microclimates here.  There was also walls of relatively new lava, as well as all ages of lava, and the ground was very rough in most places.  The guide got us past the checkpoint where they were not letting people go any further to the volcano.  The guide had some sort of "understanding" with the guards apparently, and they let us pass.  However we had to walk up the rest of the way.  It wasn't too difficult of a climb, but was maybe about 2 miles till we reached the edge of the crater. 

Isabella Island & Volcano

sharks
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The guide claimed this was the 3 largest caldera in the world.  The part that erupted recently was on the rim of the crater, so some of the lava went down the side and into the sea, and some of the lava flowed back into the crater.  The crater had been full of scrubby trees before the eruption, and the lava flowed in and destroyed the trees, creating a lava lake.  It was all black and hard by the time we saw it, but it was still hot and steaming.  The stones were very warm where we stood on the rim of the crater.  All the trees on the rim had been crisped- their leaves all brown from the intense heat, but they had not caught fire.  We didn't see any wildlife there.  It was pretty impressive to see this evidence power of the earth.

sea lion
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On the way back we stopped at a turtle breeding research center and caught our first glimpses of the famous Galapagos tortoises.  They are being bred and reintroduced in the islands.  They had been driven almost to extinction, because people hunted them for food.

We were back to the boat for lunch, then in the afternoon went on another hike, this one over brittle spiky lava field called aa-aa.  This is a hawaiian word, but refers to the type of lava where you make this noise if you try to cross it barefoot!  We came to a tidal pool where many large sharks were trapped until the tide came in.  The sharks liked to come into the pool because it would get quite warm.  It gave us a good chance to see them quite close in the clear water.  Most were white tipped sharks about 5 ft. long.  On the other side of the trapped sharks was a beach with the inevitable sea lions.  Some went swimming and snorkeling, but water was rather turbid and rough.  Melissa got to see a ray when she went snorkeling.

volcano Serra Negro
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Later several of us went into town to see if we could find an internet cafe.  The town was quite small, only a few hundred people.  We asked one older lady, she had no idea where internet would be, so next we asked a kid, who of course knew exactly where it was.  So we sent out a couple of e-mails (super slow connections) to let everyone know we had not dropped off the end of the earth (though it felt like it!).

The boat had to go a long way to our next destination, so started right after supper.  Was pretty rough all night, some took dramamine.  I was fine.