Visiting Isla Isabela in the Galápagos Archipelago

The Wall of Tears (continued)

We saw these beach plants on the beach just outside of town. This is a beach morning glory.		This is a Scaevola plumieri.

David and Marcie walking back to town on the sandy road.

Two views of a beachfront house; we're getting close to the center of town.

As we were walking through town, we came across this kid (young goat) tied up next to the road.		After lunch we walked through the park in the town square that had this unbelievably colorful flowering tree. I believe it may be a Delonix regia.

We finally reached familiar territory (the beach we had visited the previous day) and shortly thereafter we walked through the outskirts of town and up to the central square. Just across from the square we saw a small sidewalk restaurant, and since it was lunch time, we stopped to eat. They had fresh-squeezed pineapple juice, delicious chicken soup, and a main plate of fish and rice, all for $2.50.

After lunch we walked back through town and stopped at La Ballena Azul (The Blue Whale), a hotel where Marcie had heard you could get laundry done—no problem, $1 a kilo, one-day turnaround. When we finally got back to the dinghy by the beach bar/restaurant, we were surprised to see a big ship docked at the tiny panga dock. From dinghying ashore numerous times, we knew that in many places the harbor channel was extremely shallow, even for a dinghy. It was a mystery how they got this big ship all the way to shore. The boat looked like an LST (a landing craft) and was long and flat with a hinged door/ramp at the bow and a pilothouse structure at the stern. Dump trucks were driving on and off, and a payloader was loading the trucks with gravel from the ship. I thought it was pretty funny to ship-in a boatload of gravel to an island that had literally mountains of natural volcanic gravel. We later heard it was specially prepared gravel used to pave the roads, though most of the roads are unpaved sand or bulldozed natural gravel. There doesn't seem to be any real need for paved roads.