Well, I can pretty safely say I don't get seasick! We caught the boat over to Isabella Island. Two hours in the heat of the day on a delightful little boat that had enough seats for about half of the passengers and filled up with boat fumes. If I survived that without being sick, I'm pretty sure I don't get seasick! It was worth it though, Isabella is absolutely beautiful! It is even smaller and quieter than Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz. It has maybe a couple of hundred residents, a few restaurants, two or three little bars and a few hotels. The main street (and all the other streets) are dirt roads, and it has the most beautiful white sandy beach, complete with the standard sea lions and marine iguanas that we've gotten used to seeing everywhere here.
We were planning on orgainsing accommodation in Isabella when we got there. We ended up meeting a local lady named Gladys and her friend, an Australian, called Irene, as we were walking into town. We ended up staying at Gladys' hospedaje which had really nice, new self contained rooms. Irene acted as our translator, since Gladys didn't speak English and our Spanish is very limited. Irene was really helpful during the time we stayed in Isabella, but it was also nice just to hang out with another Aussie for a while.
We spent a lot of time on Isabella just relaxing, eating, drinking and swimming. We couldn't really do much here during the middle of the day because everything closes here between 11am and about 4pm, so if you are looking for food (like we made the mistake of doing) bad luck, you just have to wait for tea! On Simon's birthday we went on a tour up to Sierra Negra Volcano. It was fairly amazing, although looking back at the photos it just looks like a whole heap of rock. We actually rode horses up to the crater, which was a new and interesting experience for both of us. I was pretty nervous to begin with, but got the hang of it pretty quickly. I bonded with my horse and by the time we got back down to the bottom I wanted to take it home with me. Needless to say, Simon said no.
We also did a couple of walks while we were there. We went out to the Tortoise research centre. It was a fair bit smaller than the one on Santa Cruz, but much better set up and we went there earlier in the day, which meant the tortoises were a bit more active. We also walked out to see the Wall of Tears. I'm not sure how far it was, but it took us half the day, walking non-stop. We were both fairly hot and exhausted by the time we got there. The Wall of Tears is a wall left over from a prison that convicts were brought here to build but never finished. I think those sneaky convicts might have been already planning their escape though, because the wall was essentially just a big pile of rocks, with lots of handholds, easy to climb!
