The Sanderson Adventure Team: Fernandina and Isabella

Fernandina and Isabella

These islands are obviously named for the Spanish monarchs, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. All of the islands in the Galapagos were renamed with Spanish names when Ecuador was colonized by Spain. Ecuador later earned its independence but the Spanish names are still in use. However many maps list both the Spanish and original Ecuadorian names.

Isabella is the largest island in the Galapagos, and Fernandina is the youngest. In fact, Fernandina is still being formed. The volcano that formed Fernandina erupted most recently in 2009. The resulting lava flows formed large new portions of coastline as it cooled and hardened, including the area we walked this morning.

Our morning walk on Fernandina took us through an area where thousands of Galapagos marine iguanas were nesting and sunning themselves. These prehistoric looking lizards are big and look like they could be vicious with teeth and huge claws. However, they are herbivores that eat algae and seaweed and are quire docile. Their mean prehistoric faces were actually used as the model for the recent Godzilla movie.

In the shallow tidal areas, we saw a tremendous amount of marine life. We stood and watched as two sea lions swam and played within a few feet of us. In the same pool we also saw a huge sea turtle swimming and eating. We saw several Flightless Cormorants, a flightless sea bird that is unique to the Galapagos, a Galapagos hawk, and also the famous Darwin Finch, which played a pivotal role in Darwin’s studies that led to the theory of evolution by natural selection.

We then returned to the Flamingo I, donned our wetsuits, and went for a deep water snorkel. In addition to the many tropical fish, we were able to swim with several sea turtles that came close enough to touch.

In the afternoon, we sailed to Isabella. While the kids stayed and played on the beach, the adults in the group went for a hike where we saw some great examples of large Galapagos giant tortoises and some large land iguanas.

After returning to the boat, we set sail for our next island destination and watched the sun set as we cruised.