Money, That’s What I Want

Tuesday 2 March
Isla Isabella, Galapagos Islands

One of the things I wasn’t told about Isabella is that there are no banks on the island. This is rather unfortunate as, not knowing that, I hadn’t brought enough money with me to last the few days I was here. It ran out yesterday. Today I had to sort something out.

With Wilmer’s help I asked around and tried various options. It eventually became clear that I would have to get one of the folks to do a Western Union transfer to the island for me to have any cash at all. I phoned home and both my folks’ numbers, but there was no answer. Hmmm. That wasn’t great. I only had one other number in my (new) phone – TV’s famous Phil Reay-Smith. I called him and thankfully he answered. An hour later and it was all sorted, and I had a very expensive $200 in my wallet.

We went snorkelling in the morning. We started off in a large pool near the shore that was a mix of fresh and sea water due to the recent rains, so it was a bit brackish and brown. As we set out I noticed something swimming in the water. I went towards it. I was a penguin! It dived underwater and I followed it until it disappeared into the murkiness.

We reached a row of volcanic rocks that divided this pool from the sea proper. Wilmer mentioned that we had to climb over them and to take our flippers off. I tried to do this but a combination of algae on the rocks under the water and the jagged, volcanic nature of the rocks meant that I couldn’t keep balance. Fell over at the slowest speed possible and I acquired some slight chaffing. I put my flippers back on and found that they stopped me slipping and protected my feet from the sharp rocks as well.

Eventually we were past the rocks, and there were plenty of fish in the sea. All the usual, multicoloured tropical (equatorial?) fish. There was one large fish with a bulge on its forehead and a large mouth with four cylindrical teeth on each jaw, looking like it was eating rocks but actually scraping food off them. There were marine iguanas swimming past. You feel that evolution could do with a few more mutations to help them – they can only use their tails to swim, and their feet lie by their side, unused. They swim very slowly.

I saw one sea lion in the water. Unlike the iguanas they are very fast, and even with my flippers I couldn’t keep up with it for more than a couple of seconds. They’re certainly faster in the water than they are on land.

In the afternoon I went to a turtle breeding centre and saw more turtles that I’d seen even up to this point. They release 2000 turtles each year into the wild from this centre alone. We went to a place called the Wall of Tears where there was once a prison camp and to keep the prisoners busy they made them build a huge wall, just because. But around here were many of the turtles that had been released, slowly eating the vegetation. We also climbed up a little volcanic outcrop and had a good view of the surrounding area.

In the evening I had dinner and said goodbye to the conservationists – it would probably be the last time I would see them – except I saw them again and again over the next day!