Isabela Island
Isabela, the biggest island in the Galápagos archipelago, has been explored by whalers, buccaneers, and pirates. Today we were the explorers at this site, visiting two different famous national park sites: Urvina Bay and Tagus Cove.
Our day started a little earlier than usual, to take advantage of the best temperatures for our hike at Urvina Bay. Most of our guests went for a long hike on this uplifted area, very unique in the world since it was formed just in 1954. Our guests were amazed to observe some remnants of marine creatures far away from the coastline, especially some giant heads of coral that used to be totally covered by the ocean.
Urvina Bay has been already colonized by flora and fauna; our best sightings of the morning were huge land iguanas and some giant tortoises. Our hike was followed by some beach time.
Tagus Cove was our national park visitor site for the afternoon. This area in the past has been visited by whalers and explorers, some of who left graffiti on the rocks—the oldest dating back to 1836.
At Tagus Cove our guests enjoyed kayaking, deep water snorkeling, hiking and a Zodiac ride. The day was perfect with very good conditions for the aquatic activities. Wildlife sightings of the afternoon included: Flightless cormorants, Galápagos penguins, sea lions, sea turtles, and big schools of fish.
At the end of our day we saw a beautiful sunset while navigating to our next visitor’s site in the Galápagos National Park.
