Isla Isabela and the Quest for the Blue Footed Booby

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The tiny town of Puerto Villamil on Isla Isabella was very different than the larger and more touristy town of Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island, where we'd spent the past three weeks. It's sandy unpaved streets had an undeniable allure but there were a lot of disadvantages to being in such a small, remote place. Whereas Puerto Ayora's main front streets were given up solely to tourist hotels, restaurants and dive shops, Villamil was a complete mix of tourist accommodation and local houses. While it gave it a more authentic Ecuadorian feel, it also meant that there was a lot more garbage, something we'd become unaccustomed to seeing in polished Puerto Ayora. It was also very run down. The town square was obviously cute and well-designed at some point in the distant past but it now was in a sorry state of disrepair, meaning we had to be very careful that Kyla and Jake didn't step into a broken piece of boardwalk or a sharp broken lamp. The two kids' playgrounds were also in disrepair. One had an amazing location right on the beach but was missing most of its features. Jake and Kyla didn't seem to mind, though, and it became a favorite place of ours to hang out with local and tourist kids alike. The other playground was three blocks inland, in the non-touristy area, and was a favorite hang out for locals to drink on the weekend. There were abandoned glass bottles of hard alcohol everywhere, some completely smashed into sharp pieces, making this playground unusable. This was definitely not the Galápagos you see in magazines!





One explanation we'd heard is that most of the money spent in travel to the Galápagos doesn't make it to the locals as most tourists step off the plane and straight onto a cruise ship for a week, only to be dropped right back off at the airport. My personal theory is that it's hard to spend money in the town when everything is on permanent siesta! We were used to everything being closed from 12-3pm in Puerto Ayora, but at least mini marts were still open to buy a few basics. Here, siesta seemed to last all day for some businesses, and if you found you'd run out of bottled drinking water at 12:01, good luck! Your only chance would be to trek to the "supermarket." It was a far cry from anything you'd call a supermarket back home, with mostly packaged goods hanging out on the bare shelves in small numbers and a produce section consisting of a tray of apples. Everything was incredibly expensive too. I'm not quite sure how the locals cope, but we tried cooking once or twice (on a Sunday when virtually everything was closed) and ended up eating plain pasta with tinned sweetcorn and apples! I guess they plan a bit better than us around the weekly market on Saturdays, when the produce boat arrives!



Adding to the difficulty of our first few days there, too, was the fact that it was hard to walk anywhere to find our way around. This was because we'd made the decision to leave the stroller on Santa Cruz Island as the kids were becoming so dependent on it after only three weeks, demanding to go in the stroller for a walk of only a block or two! For the first three days I was afraid we'd made a mistake, but the kids soon discovered that they had legs again and by the end of the first week were managing to walk two miles or more in one go.



It took us about three days or so, but we did get into the swing of things and learned the location of new minimarts (important when you have small kids), learned to get well stocked up on water and snacks before siesta time, found an awesome restaurant selling tasty schwarmas that was half the price of most others, and even found an amazing driftwood beach bar for happy hour. We also changed hotels on day three, which made all the difference. Our new hotel, Hospedaje Mother Fanny, was practically right in the town square and we had a nice big room with a fridge and access to a kitchen, making it possible to make breakfast at home and saving about $20 a go compared to paying an outrageous price in the restaurants for eggs and bread!



Most importantly, we started to find the best hangouts of the animals. Isla Isabella is known as the "island of the animals" and that's what we'd come for. Our first few days we had lovely sunny weather, which was such a nice change from the intermittent cloud and drizzle we'd been having on Santa Cruz Island. We wasted no time in going to the beach to make the most of it. Town beach is a long stretch of pale sand but there were not as many animals there as I'd hoped, just a few marine iguanas on the rocks. Not surprisingly, it was the beaches further out of town that soon became our favorites.



One of the first "touristy" things we did was the giant tortoise sanctuary and flamingo lakes. A boardwalk filled with iguanas led us through several lakes with many flamingoes dotted scenically around. Kyla really liked this because her favorite color is pink! We ended up coming back several times at the children's request. It was like a mini zoo trip, but for free!



The next touristy thing we did was Concha De Perla. This is a short boardwalk over mangrove trees leading to a huge natural swimming pool, separated from the ocean by a rocky ledge. It's a good place to snorkel and often sea lions, turtles and rays are seen, as well as the occasional penguin. On the walkway, we came across a large male sea lion being rather aggressive and not allowing anyone to pass. Luckily, a guide came along and knew how to shoo him into the water so that everyone could pass by safely!



Close by is what became our favorite beach, and where we spent the majority of our days. It was right by the pier and so was easy to get a taxi to for just $2. Despite a massive concrete pier construction project complete with dump trucks and diggers (much to Jake's delight), it was full of animals. There were usually several sea lions sleeping under the shade of the trees or on the benches, and seeing one swim right by or surf a wave was common. Dozens of marine iguanas could also be seen sunning themselves. At low tide you could walk out right into the middle of the bay on a sandbar and look for shadows. We spotted rays, turtles, baby shark and even penguins this way.



Penguins were one of the things we'd really wanted to see, but we didn't really want to pay for a guided tour of the local offshore islands of Tintoreras, where they call home. Luckily we were tipped off by the pier security guard that they were seen almost daily near the pier at 6am, doing their morning hunt for fish, before they returned to rest on the rocks of Tintereras. 6am was a bit too early for us but we managed to get there at 7:30am one day and instantly saw one penguin. He soon disappeared, but we had another look off the pier at 8:30am and saw a penguin again, swimming around the pier looking for fish. He was soon joined by three of his penguin friends and we watched for about 45 minutes as they swam around and under the pier like tiny torpedoes. Given that we'd heard that there are currently only four penguins in total living in the area, we'd definitely hit the jackpot!



Another animal that we'd really wanted to find was the iconic blue footed booby bird. Since arriving in the Galápagos we'd seen it in countless versions such as on T-shirts, mugs, restaurant signs, and of course stuffed animals. Finding the flesh and blood version, however, was proving much more problematic. Any time we'd asked around town, we were told to book onto a tour of Los Tuneles. This would have cost us an outrageous $400 for the day for our family of four, and would have potentially been a disaster. It involved a hike over spiky lava rocks (and I'm sure it wouldn't have been at 3-year-old-meander-pace) followed by a snorkel, which the kids probably wouldn't do for more than five minutes due to the cold water temperature. Yes, doing a tour would be a last resort, we decided. We had to find another way to track down the elusive boobies!



One day we ran into a Swiss woman who lived on the island, but who we'd hung out with quite a lot of the playground at Santa Cruz while she was visiting her in-laws there. We asked her where we could see them and she told us to try Playa Del Amor (Love Beach). Later on, we heard the same thing from a taxi driver. Maybe we were on to something?...



The next day we jumped into a taxi and had him drop us off two kilometers out of town close to Playa Del Amor. This was the end of the road for vehicles. There was a guard station to the whole area, and a map showing several beaches. We signed in and asked the guard if there was a place to see blue footed boobies but he was e trembly vague, seemingly avoiding the question. Oh well, we'd just have to see for ourselves.



The sandy path had many well-signposted turn offs and we were soon at our first beach, La Playita. No sign of boobies. We went back to the main path and continued on to the next beach, Playa Del Amor. Again, no boobies. However, as we stood checking out some huge marine iguanas, a bird with a suspiciously blue-looking beak flew overhead. As he was flying with his feet tucked in, we couldn't tell if they were blue, but I just had a feeling. We watched where he was heading, further up the coast. I climbed up the lava rocks to get a better view and spotted a rock with hundreds of white specks in an inlet in the distance. Could they be blue footed boobies, or just boring old pelicans?



I consulted the photo of the map I'd taken at the guard station and we decided that it looked to be the El Estero turn-off. About a 10 minute walk brought us to the turn-off. Pretty soon we came across an unmarked fork in the path. Which way to go? We ran into a tour guide with a single client and listened in as he told a Chilean family which way they should go for a nice tree tunnel and beach. We then asked him about blue footed boobies, and he nonchalantly said to take the other fork and there were some there, almost like an after-thought. Excited, we trekked along a muddy trail, followed closely by the Chileans. When we made it to the ocean, there, sitting on the rocks, was a colony of literally hundreds of boobies in all their blue-footed glory! Some were very close, providing the perfect photo op. Why, in a week of being in town and asking about blue-footed boobies, had no-one mentioned this to us?? I guess the answer was pretty obvious- they wanted you to take the tour for hundreds of dollars instead! We definitely felt a sense of achievement. We'd finally checked off all of the animals we'd wanted to see and did it without taking a single tour (other than scuba diving, of course!)



When we'd had our fill of blue footed boobies, we walked back towards the guard station in hopes of finding a taxi. There was none to be seen, so we started walking back to town. We were soon hit with complaints and cries of "taxi!" from the kids. Ugh, it was going to be a long hard trek. We moved to walking on the beach and did our best to distract them. Kyla got busy collecting shells along the way, and Jake got busy chasing scott and then drawing a line in the sand with a big stick for me to follow. An hour later, and with minimal complaints, we had covered the 2km back to town. This was when we ran into a nice Colorado family we knew and discovered happy hour at Rosada Restaurant/Bar (the place that quickly became one of our favorite spots). At the bar was a quote by Charles Darwin that I thought perfectly summed up our walk back home with the kids:



"Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure!"



Ironically, the next day was gorgeous and sunny so we headed out early to our favorite beach by the pier. There, on the rocks just off the beach, were about twenty blue footed boobies! I guess they're not as elusive as we'd first thought. The same thing happened with the penguin. After making a big effort to get out early to see it several days before, we had three days in a row where a group of penguins could be seen playing right offshore, hunting fish, and surfing in on the waves. Scott and I took turns going in to snorkel with it and it got really close to us, even bumping into Scott's leg at one point as it was hunting. I loved watching it dive down under the water and then rise up to take a breath, only to dart off out of sight a moment later. At one point, it took a break to preen its feathers on the surface, much like a duck. I floated next to it, no more than two feet away, watching it above and below water. It gave me a passing glance once in a while but otherwise ignored this strange being observing its every move.



On our last morning, we were happy to see a blue sky. We rushed down to our favorite beach and ate breakfast there. The animals all came out as if to say goodbye to us. There were about 10 sea lions doing synchronized swimming by the pier and the penguin also made an appearance. For the first time, we even saw two penguins out on the rocks, but at a far distance. On the beach, the sky was filled with the usual frigate birds, blue footed boobies, and pelicans. A handful of blue footed boobies even landed on the rocks, showing off their feet! It was a really nice morning. I'll skip over the afternoon, when the kids did nothing but fight nonstop!



Over our three weeks on Isla Isabela, we met quite a few other families, a few of which we've stayed in touch with, and got to be well-known among the locals. By the end, we would often jump into a taxi and greet the driver by name, or go to a coffee shop and know the locals at the other two tables. It's such a small town that it doesn't take long!



It's been great, but it's time to move on. Tomorrow we are taking the speed boat back to Isla Santa Cruz for our last week of our year long trip!





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