Galapagos - Isabela

Island hopping in Galapagos is unfortunately not that easy and certainly not comfortable, especially if you save money by not flying. For $30 per person per trip, you have the dubious pleasure of speeding across the wild Pacific for two hours in an overpowered nutshell. At first, we were looking forward to a nice boat ride until we noticed the sickness bags provided for prevention. Great. Fortunately, we were not sitting so far forward and not inside the boat, so we didn't have to use them. However, some other passengers did. Enclosed between people vomiting, trying to suppress nausea themselves, constantly under the strain of the waves on our spine, and with the acoustic and olfactory backdrop of 750 horsepower at our back, we were glad when we finally arrived after 4 hours (2x2) of travel.

Isabela still demands an additional fee, even though you have already paid $100 per person for the national park fee. Maybe it's because it is located both south and north of the equator... The largest of the islands is very calm and peaceful, although touristy, but the number of tourists is limited, so you constantly run into the people you saw vomiting on the boat. Additionally, you are hardly allowed to do anything on this island on your own, so that you buy the expensive tourist tours. Nevertheless, Isabela was actually the most beautiful time on Galapagos for us, mainly because of the tranquility and the food.

In addition to turtles and lobos, there were flamingos, penguins, and blue-footed boobies (yes, that's really what they're called) to see here. We also had the (un)fortunate opportunity to participate in a guided hike that led to a spectacular active volcanic crater several kilometers in diameter. The catch: it was so foggy that we couldn't see anything at all (see photo). But we could feel the eruptions a few kilometers away! The earth was shaking. Isabela also offers beautiful, partly deserted beaches and nice waves to jump in. Here we also saw 'wild' tortugas for the first time.