A stroll through the town, along a sandy path and across a lagoon in the morning gave us encounters with birds called stilts, ducks swimming on orange water and iguanas who like to sunbathe on the wooden walkway. Sometimes you’re lucky to see flocks of pink flamingoes on the lagoon in the afternoon, we weren’t so lucky in the morning.
We passed through old lava fields growing cacti, endemic species and native species of plants and occasional introduced species. As the lava field ended the vegetation changed instantly to a lush forest with sand paths and poison apple trees – bad news for humans, moorish for giant tortoises. Even the bark has bite.
The Giant Tortoise Breeding Center has over 1000 tortoises in various stages of development, gearing up for release into the wild, at a rate of about 500 per year. The males definitely take their role seriously as everywhere we turned it seemed there was the snuffling, low grunting and shell knocking sound of giant tortoise love…and they don’t care who watches. I saw two juveniles fighting over a poison apple, specimen jars of the tortoise as it forms in the egg and a month old baby that fits in your palm. They need to live so long so they can grow to be giants. I snapped a close up of a juvenile through a gate just before he snapped onto my camera lens…just as well they aren’t too fast.
We jumped aboard the very open air, benches-in-the-back-of-a-truck transport we had been using and headed to the Wall of Tears. Turned into a photo stop of tears when Antje got her clothes caught on the seat and fell the metre or so to the ground, dislocating her finger. JP did an excellent job in the situation, going into work mode she says. In the end Antje had a half splint of plaster, decent swelling and Shawn, ever the gentleman, carried her bags.
While Antje and Karin went to the hospital, the rest of us continued to the Wall – “where strong men cry and weak men die” A project to keep the prisoners busy, the wall is a wide, high and several metres long mountain of lava rocks, collected and carried on foot by prisoners, then stacked high in a green space also used by the US military for a base.
Back into the panga’s – narrow canoe type boats used as water taxis – and struggling into our wetsuits again we enjoyed a calm snorkel around a lagoon not far from the dock. The underwater lava tubes have created mini sea walls and channels attractive for schools of fish, chocolate chip starfish, the endemic multi-pointed sea star and a sandy bottom area very popular for resting sea turtles who lounge on the bottom, coming up for air occasionally before descending back down to lay flat out. Something that still gets me with snorkeling is the lack of peripheral vision. You see one turtle, then another and then realise they are all around you if you look directly in all directions. Everyone gets excited at the same time, all looking at a turtle in front of them and trying to let their buddy know its there, while the other is doing the same for a different turtle. Then the scene widens and everyone sees all the turtles. In the end it’s like a collective, slow-motion face palm.
The panga’s did a turn around the bay where we spotted more sea lions in boats and crabs, blue footed boobies and penguins on the shoreline. Yes. Penguins! Penguins making it look difficult jumping into the water and rather just falling up gracefully. Their markings reminded me of the Magellanic penguins in Argentina, but of a smaller size and clearly reveling in the sunshine. Cactus on the beach and penguins on lava rock shorelines. Getting the feeling I’ve seen it all. Almost.
The panga’s let us off at Tintoreras. As the sun slowly travelled towards the horizon we saw large numbers of marine iguanas snorting the salt from their noses, piling on top of each other for warmth and looking generally dozy. They look like mythical dragons and are not cute at all. Which is a pity as they sit very still and some close to the pathway, making photo capture relatively easy. A big surprise was finding the reason for the name of the area. Tintoreras means sharks and an alley caused by two walls of lava rock is a resting place for the white tip reef shark, an abundance of which were gliding up and down through the alley, sharing space with turtles, crabs and small fish. Every corner I turn here blows my tiny mind!
