In the afternoon we land on a young lava field on Isabela Island. Young means a few hundred years, and the lava is very dark (dark grey, sometimes almost black). The field is a huge terrain where the basalt has cracked and broken. Sometimes the stone looks like frozen waves, making parts of it look soft, sometimes it has many little cracks, creating a very rough surface that you couldn't walk upon with bare feet (Apparently it's called "Ah-Ah"-Lava because you go...

This morning we went into a mangrove forest with our Dingies. We saw a couple of penguins and many cormorans on the way and lots of sea turtles in the mangrove forest. Some of them swam next to our boats for minutes. It's easy to tell the difference between female and male turtles - the latter are much bigger and slightly brighter. And by bigger I mean really BIG - one was easily over 1 m in diameter. After that we snorkeled in nearby waters and we saw more sea ...

Today we had another awesome landing on Isabela Island. Animal of the day: Iguana. After passing a few trees behind the landing rock, we see a SEA of them - easily 100 Iguanas on the same spot, lying in the sun, crawling over each other. Amazing! We have to make a lot of noise and wave our hands to make them move a bit so that we can even pass. Later we see how Iguanas dig their nests - very much like construction workers in Berlin. They wander around, suddenly ...

We land at a beautiful beach for snorkeling. We snorkel almost every day, but today is really amazing. The visibility is good, so lots of fish schools and big blue parrot fishes can be seen. I get excited and leave the group without noticing. Near a small rock isle I see a black-tip shark underneath me in the water. Then there's another one, then another. Suddenly I find myself floating over 5 or 6 sharks which elegantly swim beneath me. It's an amazing experienc...

After the night on the sundeck we have a new companion on board. A seal (or sea lion? Still can't tell the difference) comes onto the fantail of the boat, enjoying the rays of the morning sun and rubbing its fur on the blue carpet (see pic). It doesn't mind us at all, so we collect a lot of photos with various people and the seal. After breakfast, the crew try to scare the seal off the boat because the wanna prepare the dingies for our first landing. It makes cl...