I thought it couldn't get any more magical, but it did.
Following our few days spent on Santa Cruz, we headed to our next island.
Isabela. The island was actually formed by the merging of six volcanoes, all except one are still active making it one of the most volcanically active places on Earth.
Getting between the islands in the Galapagos is no easy feat. We chose the earliest ferry departing Santa Cruz, made sure we had our tickets ready and had to be at the port 1 hour before departure. It wasn't exactly clear what was going on but we were given a tag that indicated what boat we were on and then we had to make our way through another round of bag checks (this is so there isn't any cross contamination between islands). Tip - make sure walking boots and hiking gear are near the top because they will make you unpack your bag to check them and then watch you struggle packing it all away again, and just to add that this is all done on a jetty!
We finally made it to our boat, it was only a small style speed boat with perhaps 30 of us onboard. The waters between the islands are known for being rough so we had taken sea sickness tablets beforehand. Needless to say, lots of other people hadn't and were quite sick as a result. It also takes much longer to reach the islands because of the conditions of the sea so we arrived at Isabela a few hours later.
Now I am just going to get straight to the ultimate highlight of our trip to the Galapagos: Los Tuneles tour. We had spent ages trying to decide which tour we were going to do because they are not cheap and we could only really justify doing one so we wanted to make sure we were picking the best! We settled on the Los Tuneles tour on Isabela island.
We were taken by speedboat (we saw manta rays jumping!) along the coast of Isabela to the 'tunnels'. Lava from the volcanoes had flowed and created a unique geological formation which were of course shaped like tunnels. We walked ashore for a while with our guide learning about the flora and fauna of the island. It was here we also spotted lots of blue-footed boobie birds!
Then it was time for snorkelling, I was of course the first in the water! It wasn't warm at all, I was glad we had wetsuits on. The world beneath the surface was something else. We saw turtles, trumpet fish, seahorses, black tip and white tip sharks, golden rays, so many other sea creatures...it was completely incredible. My favourite part was gliding along with the golden rays, it really was magical.
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