Friday 24th Feb:  Approaching Academy Bay, Santa Cruz, Galapagos 00 48.6S  90 22.7W     

Update blog by Peter

The last blog  left you the morning after the night before ….

Sunday 19^th we motored, yet again, to Floreana, a convenient stop on the route to Isabella.  While heading for our permitted anchorage we passed “post office bay”. The story here is that passing ships would leave their own letters in a barrel and collect from said barrel any mail that was going in their direction.  Not as speedy as modern day communications.

  Post Office Bay in the rain

Floreanna itself is a rather unprepossessing island with those going ashore needing to pay a random anchorage fee.  Receipts were not in evidence. Bob did however manage to contact the descendants of the lady who ran a guest house and served his tour boat lunch when he worked here as a lad some 40 years ago.

Monday we motored on to Villamil on Isabella, the largest in the archipelago.  It wasn’t all boring as a large pod of dolphins came to play and a whale shark showed us his fin and then lurked for a while just below the surface.  The anchorage “isn’t as big as it looks owing to extensive reefs and rocks”.  Anyway we found a spot and the locals (or at least those who had done it before) showed us the very long route to shore at low water.  Not one to be comfortable with in the dark.  The water taxis missed a trick as it took them a couple of days to realise they had a lot of customers.

Tuesday we did the town.  Generally clean and tidy with a lot of building work going on plus a flamingo pool.  Iguanas patrolled the beach. In the afternoon Bob & Linda hired bicycles and cycled to the wall of tears.  This wall, made of lava blocks, 100 metres long, 7 metres wide serves no purpose but was built by prisoners when Isabella had a penal colony between 1946 and 1959.  During their return, dodging giant tortoises in the road, the heavens opened and two very soggy people called for a lift back to the boat.

Wednesday was an early start, first to move the boat to a place with more water and swinging room and secondly for the horse-riding tour to the nearby volcano.  A taxi ride was followed by a horse ride up to the rim of the caldera (a 6 mile round crater where the magma chamber beneath has collapsed) and then a walk across some lava fields.  Spectacular views virtually impossible to get god photos of.   On the way down it rained so Bob & Linda got soggy again.

Happy horses awaiting our arrival (they hadn’t seen us at this stage)

Steaming Caldera (water on hot rocks)

Lava tube (inside flowed out after outer cooled)

Thursday was a restful day of consolidation with lots of moans and groans from the out of practice horse riders and today after a motoring start I started this blog in a sailing breeze – now died and what is left is coming from where we want to go (Serendipity special).  Leave you with a frigate bird resting at the top of the mast.