Day 405 – Isabela

Today, we decided to eat out for breakfast, as we had run out of supplies. We went to the restaurants surrounding the central plaza. Most of the shops were still closed. We found one of them opened where we decided to have a very simple breakfast.

After breakfast we did some grocery shopping to restock our supplies.

Los Tuneles Tour

We had booked the ‘Los Tuneles’ tour two days ago at Ferri Tours. Los Tuneles is a section of Isabela that is formed by lava tunnels that are in water. The half day tour includes snorkelling through and then walking on the tunnels. Despite running for a few hours, the tour will cost around $100 USD ($151.15 AUD) per person (p/p). As far as we can gather, the pricing is high due to the tour’s popularity. According to the agency, around 200 people do the tour daily. We were able to negotiate the price down to $90 USD ($136.10 AUD) p/p, including a short wet suit. Some people claimed that paying the extra $5 USD ($7.56 AUD) for the full length wetsuit is worth it, but we opted not to.

Since our guest house was only a 5 minute walk away, we had agreed to walk there. We arrived around 10.45am. We had to wait while the others were being picked up. Then we got into a taxi that took us one block away to another agency to get our wetsuits and flippers. We were going to use our own snorkelling masks. The wet suits were 2.5mm thick and seemed warm enough.

The group consisted of 10 people from various countries, but everyone spoke English. Then we got back into the taxi and were driven to the pier. As we waited, I was hoping to see more penguins to no avail. However, we saw some cute young sea lions.

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We boarded a small speed boat, that was comfortable for the 10 tourists, guide, first mate and captain. The first mate was next to me and would point to various birds and sea life whenever he saw them.

As we left the pier, we rode past an area called Tintoreras. This is the location of the other half day tour that can be done from Isabela. It’s a half day tour similar to Los Tuneles, but the chance to see penguins are high. It’s a lot cheaper than the Tunnels. If we didn’t see the penguins randomly at the pier yesterday (Day 404), we would have done this tour.

The rest of the boat ride was good and not too bumpy. Our first stop was an outlying rock that was now home to heaps of blue footed boobies (type of bird). We could only see them from a distance.

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Snorkelling at Los Tuneles

Then we stopped at Los Tuneles. Since the agency had told us about the 200 other people, we were expecting more boats. Ours was the only one around. As we were all getting into our wetsuits another boat arrived and stopped 10 metres away.

We jumped into the water…and yes…it was cold! However, not a crippling cold that would prevent us from enjoying the day. One person from the group did not feel comfortable snorkelling. The guide provided her with a life jacket and was with her for the entire tour which was nice.

The water around us was teeming with marine life. Mainly different varieties of fish. The water clarity was decent, but not crystal clear. We followed the guide around the water.

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Our first main attraction and the reason we did the tour was for the sea horses. We saw a seahorse. It was small and lying on the sea floor. I honestly think it was dead, as it wasn’t vibrant or moving too much. I think it was just swaying with the current. However, I didn’t want to touch it so I will never know.

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Our next stop was a cave. We each took a turn to look inside. Inside were around 7 sharks looking back at us! They were apparently sleeping! The common joke here is that the sharks are vegetarian. It was a fine line between amazing and scary.

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Then we continued to snorkel around the area, see several more fish, another seahorse (that again looked dead) and a few more sharks in caves. The sharks we saw were white tips and are only meant to be active at night time. Some of them were between 1 to 2 metres long! One was swimming around though.

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The next area was to see the sea turtles. The Galapagos sea turtles are massive. The largest we saw was around 1m wide and 2m across. We saw a few sea turtles, and they looked majestic, floating around us

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Following this, we returned to our boat. We were given hot chocolates as we changed. Then we rode for a short time to more lava tunnels.  

Walking the Los Tuneles

We were able to climb onto the tunnels and walk around. In this area, no snorkelling is allowed and the water is crystal clear. We were able to see the bottom. There were several sea turtles swimming through the water, which was so cool.

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We could also see a few Blue Footed Boobies. They seemed so tame and did not freak out when they saw us. We were around 1m away from them. This is because there are no natural predators on the Islands. So the animals have been able to evolve without fear. We were lucky enough to see some babies too. The young ones did not have blue feet yet.

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After this, we got back into the boat and went back to the Isabela Pier. The way back wasn’t rough, but the waves were massive. The captain would ride out some of the massive waves, which was exciting.

We arrived back at the pier and were driven to the agency to return our wetsuits and flippers. The group exchanged numbers and we went our separate ways. We headed back to the guest house to chill for the rest of the day.