After getting so much sleep the night before, it wasn’t too hard to wake up a bit early and go for a run to explore the island. I didn’t exactly know good places to run and the town was pretty small, so I ended up just running up and down the town’s small streets. It was pretty cool because not many shops were open, but there were still quite a few people out, getting ready for the day. And there were lots of bikers! Mountain bikes, not motor bikes. It was pretty sweet getting to run in shorts and in low altitude!
After a quick shower, we all ate breakfast and met up with our tour group. From there our guide led us on a walk to the entrance of Tortuga Bay. We walked on a gorgeous brick path for about 3 km through a gorgeous forest filled with crazy-looking plants until we came upon…Tortuga Bay! I know, that’s a big surprise.
Wow. A bit dangerous for swimming, but amazing to see
The beach was absolutely gorgeous with bright white sand, turquoise water, and deep black volcanic rocks. At first we thought the beach alone was amazing, and then we started to see all the wildlife on the beach! There were HUGE iguanas everywhere that weren’t afraid of humans at all and you could get so close. They bummed around the rocks and acted like lazy cats. Well, that is until they start swimming…then they looked like dogs doing the doggy paddle! Haha, I think the sight of iguanas swimming is one of the most comical things I’ve ever seen.
Iguana or dinosaur? You decide
There were also bright red crabs and all types of birds. I took tons and tons of pictures, but for a lot of them my camera was accidently set on the black-and-white setting, and the bright colors of the animals was half the reason they were so cool. Well, I still had plenty of pics that turned out!
Though the open water of the ocean was dangerous to swim in due to strong currents, we kept walking a bit to come upon a protected area of water where we were able to swim. Plus there was lots of gorgeous sand (trust me, sand can be gorgeous) and so we couldn’t resist building some sand castles and digging some holes. Though the top layer of sand was white, but as we dug down, there were distinct layers of blue and purple sand! It looked like those sand-layer creations we used to make in art class. Well, I guess we technically made them out of colored salt, but same idea.
After some quality beach time, we headed back to the trail and then to the town of Puerto Ayora. On our way back, Pedro, Megan, Liz, and I stopped by Laguna Las Ninfas where there were lots of kids diving off a pier and jumping off high branches. Then we had to hit up ice cream on the way back. Well, it wasn’t technically ice cream, but helados de paila, which is ice cream made with ice, egg white, and flavors such as fruit juice, and stirred in a paila, a large copper pot. So there’s no cream involved. They were quite delicious, but I’m not sure if it beats ice cream.
After lunch, our tour group drove to the lava tubes, which were as cool as the name implies. The lava tubes are huge underground tunnels formed by lava flow (hence the name). The outside of the lava cooled, forming the roof and walls, but the stuff inside kept going, forming a hollow tube. When I heard about them, I expected them to be fairly small, but they were huge – in width, height, and length! It was kinda like walking through a giant cave, except it was all dry with no animals. Plus the owners had added some lighting along the walls so it was pretty easy to see your way.
I guess a good thing about walking through these tunnels is that we don't have to worry about a train coming through!
After the lava tube adventure, we still had some time before dinner, so us four decided to check out Las Grietas, a cool place we read about in the handy Lonely Planet guidebook. To get there, we had to take a water taxi, and on our way we met up with Rubon and Kathy, a really nice couple from India in our tour group who are working in Quito. So we all hopped in the water taxi which dropped us onto a small dock. From there we followed signs to Las Grietas. At first the path was extremely easy to follow and easy walking but when we arrived to another beach we accidentally followed the path onto a hotel’s grounds where we were politely but firmly told that we had taken the wrong path.
So we back-track and soon found the right path and continued on our way. The terrain was like nothing I’ve seen before with big red rocks and barren trees. Again, I felt like I was on another planet and I wouldn’t have been too surprised to see a dinosaur pop out of the scenery. We also passed a salt mine with bright pink…something (salt-water?).
Salt mines...now I want to know why my table salt isn't pink
As we scrambled along the rocks, we passed a guy with a surfboard coming back from Las Grietas. He said it was pretty, but definitely not a good place for surfing. Well, none of us are exactly professional surfers nor had surfboards, so we weren’t too upset about that.
We finally came upon Las Grietas, which in Spanish means The Cracks, and was very-well named. It was a gorgeous, calm water-hole in between two huge walls of rock. I have no idea why the guy we passed thought it would be good for surfing. The water was one of the prettiest deep turquoise-blues that I’ve ever seen, and I tried to capture the color on camera, but some things film just can’t show. We were running out of time before dinner so we couldn’t swim, but it was still a really cool sight to see.
Las Grietas, aka, The Cracks. Well, you gotta give the namer credit for accuracy
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