Visiting Isla Isabela in the Galápagos Archipelago

Reef Shark Trail (continued)

A spotted ray, slowly "flying" through the water.

While walking on the nature trail we saw some shiny patches on the lava rocks. Upon examining them closely, we saw that the rocks had been coated by iron pyrite, or fool's gold. They were quite attractive and widespread and we took a couple of small pieces as curios. There were also a few marine iguanas on the rocks, and numerous additional iguanas in the shade under some mangrove bushes. We saw and heard sea-lions in the mangroves, too.

One side of the islet fronted directly on the ocean and the surf was very rough. Waves crashed ashore on rough rocks but there was also a coarse beach composed of basalt pebbles, pieces of coral, and small shells. The beach also had piles of poop, presumably from sea-lions.

Two frigatebirds flying over the islet.

This sea-lion just came out of the water and is heading for shade under the mangrove trees. There are other sea-lions already under the trees.		Unlike other beaches that are sandy, the beaches on this islet are mostly pebbly, with pieces of coral and shells.

I thought this sign was hilarious. The park thoughtfully provided a "No Swimming" sign right in the middle of the reef shark channel. Duh!

After visiting the island we rode the dinghy over to the beach bar/restaurant for lunch. While we were eating and gazing out over the harbor, it looked like the rough surf suddenly washed someone's dinghy off the beach and we saw it drift away. We pondered what to do, and finally David launched our dinghy and motored over to the escaped dinghy. He hauled in on the dinghy's anchor line to retrieve the anchor but the line kept coming in and coming in, dozens of feet of rope. Finally David pulled up the anchor and we concluded that the dinghy had actually been securely anchored and wasn't about to escape. Due to the long anchor line, the dinghy was able to drift around quite a bit in the swirling shallows behind the surf line.

At night, back on the boat, we watched a DVD of Casablanca (with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman), one of my favorite movies. We first tried Marcie's new laptop, but it seemed to have developed sound problems. We wound up using David's old laptop, which worked fine though it had a smaller screen. During the show we munched on two bags of delicious microwave popcorn. We also got a kick out of the song "As Time Goes By", since Marcie loves show tunes and knows the words for numerous songs (ALL the words including ALL the verses!).