The anchorage in Isabella is slightly open to the south so we tucked ourselves in to get out of the slow Pacific swell that rolls in here. Sea lions greeted us, swimming around the boat hoping for an easy night sleeping aboard. Once it became obvious that it wasn’t going to happen they made haste to a huge mooring buoy just behind us. Just as well to be out of the water in late afternoon having seen some sizable fins swimming through the boats at that time of day.

 

Ashore has been amazing, with colonies of iguanas, flamingos, blue footed boobies and bizarrely, penguins. They are tiny little things, not much bigger than a mallard that bat around the anchorage catching fish and bobbing to the surface whenever they stop fishing. They look like bath toys that need winding up every now and again. Apparently they arrived here however long ago and were the size of emperor penguins, adapting to their new environment they shrank, lost their body fat and also lost the feathers that grew up their legs. So now they look like they’re wearing shorts!