After breakfast today we made a last minute decision to get onto one of the small charter flights that fly between Isabella and Santa Cruz (where the main airport is) to go spend one night there to get a small feel for the place and also to avoid the 6am, 2 hour boat ride from Isabella to Santa Cruz tomorrow morning. The 2 hour boat ride here on Sunday was awful! Not only was it choppy, long and hot but there was poor ventilation on the boat and an overwhelming smell of fuel, the concoction of which made for some serious nausea and a generally unpleasant experience which we elected to avoid experiencing again.
25 minute flight from Isabella to Santa Cruz gave us an awesome opportunity to see these volcanic islands from the sky…SO beautiful!
Isla Isabella has been amazing! The small hotel where we stayed (casa de la marita), the white beaches and warm water, the iguanas and birds, the incredible dive of yesterday, the quaintness of the town and the warmth of the people there have made it a beautiful and memorable experience albeit it a short one. Although a visit to the Galapagos is something that should be on everybody’s bucket list, it is an expensive destination because most things on the islands have to be brought in from the mainland. This aside, the fauna, flora and wildlife make for an incredible and unique experience that isn’t comparable with anything else in the world and for that alone it is worth making the logistically challenging journey to get here.
We are spending the evening at a small hotel called the Royal Palm that is inland on Santa Cruz and very different from the beach/sea experience of the last 2 nights. Although this is “nice” in a quiet and relaxing kind of way, there is limited activity and vista and therefore glad that this hotel wasn’t our choice for the 3 night stay. If you are visiting the Galapagos, a beach/sea experience is a MUST, and Puerto Villamil on Isla Isabella is THE place regardless of the hotel choice of which there must be 8 or so.
Pelican swallowing fishes!
We are both feeling like this is definitely a place to come back to in the future and are grateful for the opportunity to have experienced this short time in this unique paradise. Tomorrow we head back to Quito for 2 nights and then press onto Colombia.
