Our Time is Running Out

Sunday 28 February
Isla Santa Cruz – Isla Isabella

The guy showing me round the island doesn’t have any English, and I don’t have more than the basic Spanish, so there is some confusion sometimes. We go to a place inland where there are some turtles. I’m not sure what exactly is going on but we spend a couple of hours walking around in the heat. We see a couple of very large turtles, they must be really old.

After that we went to a lava tunnel – an underground tunnel created by some lava flow sometime in the past. It’s very spooky and dripping with water. I walk all the way down to a part where the ceiling becomes very low and although the lights continue past this point and I could conceivably crawl through, the floor is wet and dirty and I don’t especially feel like it. I back to the entrance and the driver isn’t there – turns out he was waiting at the exit, expecting me to crawl through. I wait for a bit in the heat before he returns.

Then I travelled to Isabella island by boat. It was a two hour ride and there were more people than seats. I eventually ended up sitting on the floor which turned out to be a good idea as there was more space there, and a cool breeze coming from the hatch open in the fo’c’sle.

Once there I meet up with a new guide, a half-Japanese, half-Ecuadorean guy called Wilmer. He was really sweet and clearly had a great knowledge and passion for his job – he would get excited whenever we saw some new animal, and he also knew the Latin names of the animals.

We went to a place where there were flamingos and to get to it we had to walk though a nature reserve that held iguanas, lizards and lots of different types of birds. Unfortunately half way through my camera ran out of battery. That’s the one bad thing about this camera – it doesn’t tell you that it’s about to run out, it only tells you when it has, and shuts down. However even after it has run out, you can still turn it on again four or five times and take a quick picture before it shuts down again, as long as you don’t use the zoom.

We saw only about three or four flamingos and I just about managed to get a picture of them. Then on the walk back we went via the beach, and there was the most amazing sunset ever. And I didn’t have a working camera with me. Arsebiscuits.

I got back to the hotel and discovered that my room didn’t have air conditioning. I tried complaining to the hotel staff but they weren’t playing ball. So I asked to speak to the person who organised this trip – someone called Jovi who I only ever had any contact with over the phone. I don’t know what he said to them but pretty quickly they cleared out another room that seemed to be full of laundry and gave it to me. It was a three-bed room so now it felt like I had the penthouse suite.

That evening I met up with a large group that was staying in the same hotel as me, and indeed came over on the same boat. They had been doing conservation work on San Christobal island. They were a combination of British, Australian, American, Canadian, French, Norwegian (I think that’s all of them) and were all easy going and good to get along with. I went to bed fairly early as this tour means I have a lot of early starts.