We've been playing the past two days. In the back of our minds, we always feel almost guilty, like we should be working on the boat. It's a sickness. Gudrun felt guilty going ashore the following day after they grounded, feeling like they should be staying aboard the boat to "console" it. I guess it's because your boat carries you across a terrain that you can't live on... water. So the bond is tight.
From Galapagos

Yesterday we walked to Tortuga Bay. It is national park land & is a few minutes walk from town across a canyon at the head of the harbor and then up steep steps to the start of a long, gorgeous stone walkway to the beach. It passes through lush but dry vegetation with lots of birds and Opuntia- a unique cactus to the Galapagos that looks like a prickly pear but is a tree with a trunk that resembles a pine. It took somewhere around 20 minutes to traverse the path and then you come out onto this stunning, wide, flat beach. At high tide, most of the beach is covered but at low tide, it's quite an expanse of pure white sand. Small, harmless sharks swim in the shallowest of the waves. You can continue on to a second, mangrove protected beach with shady trees and lots of pelicans. There's a little trail that goes out to seaward for views of surf breaking on lava rocks with their resident marine iguanas. They blend in perfectly with the color of the rocks and just vegetate there, coughing & snorting.

Tim & Nathan joined us for dinner last night and brought the Easter ham- imported from Denmark in the can! There seems to only be pollo available in the market right now. Since it's about a billion degrees here, we hung out in the cockpit & grilled the canned hams after I stuck cloves in them. Just before removing from the grill, we carefully basted them with honey for that golden look. You make do!
From Galapagos

And today we hired a cab to take us all to a few inland sites. Cerro Crocker, the highest point on the island, sits up in the clouds and has a nice trail that could sometimes make for a great view at the top. But today it poured most of the way up, the whole time at the top and most of the way down. We like being cool, just missed the pictures we didn't get. On the way up, the foliage was lush & green as you might expect and it is home to another Galapagos unique species- the rail bird. They are virtually flightless and scurry amongst the thick low shrubs, but one did come out to see us so we got a nice picture. They are kindof stubby and you can see how they wouldn't be good fliers. Next was the lava tubes. They are basically tunnels, made by flowing lava, rather than erosion. At times the ceiling was 25 feet high or more and at one point we were lying virtually flat, squeezing under the lowest of ceilings. We've never been in anything like that before but Nathan says there are similar near Mt St Helens.

Taken from the Galapapos National Park website, this explains how lava tubes are formed.
"Lava tubes form when the surface layer of the lava flow cools on contact with cooler atmospheric air. As it cools and hardens, it acts as an insulator preventing the solidification of hot fluid material that continues to run below it. At the end of the eruption and once all the lava has passed, we get an empty tube. Through cooling, cracks, tremors, often fracture the top of the tube, collapsing, and thus the inside is exposed."

After that, we headed to Los Gemelos, two sink holes surrounded by Scalesia forest & home to the vermilion flycatcher, a bright reddish bird. But it turned out you needed a private park guide to do the trail through the sinkholes so we didn't do it. We did get to sneak over and see the sinkholes though and do a few feet of the trail. It seemed good enough. But no flycatchers. Then Chapi, our driver, took us back to town.
From Galapagos

We walked around town some visiting the marine chandleries, we revisited the tortuga preserve & discovered they also house a preserve for endemic, endangered land iguanas and we saw "Lonesome George", the last of his dynasty of tortoise species from one of the islands in the Galapagos. The land iguana is so endangered because of loss of habitat years ago and more recently, predators such as feral dogs & competition for food from feral pigs, etc. They are a beautiful golden/orange color and very peaceful.
From Galapagos

We ended the day with a "large national beer" as they call it, which is like a beer & a half, along with some local snacks to go with it. All along the waterfront, there are numerous little local's restaurants that sell the famous almuertzo which is $3-4 and includes juice, soup and then the main course which is usually rice, plantains, meat in a sauce, maybe some potato salad or something similar but they also have little stands with smaller snacks. Today we split a plate that had plantains, chorizo, starchy plantain & roasted beef on a skewer. It is inexpensive and a good way to sample what the locals eat.

Tomorrow we'll rise & shine very early to get to the produce market by 6am since you have to get there early if you want good selection. We need to provision here before heading to Isla Isabela because that island is much smaller. We really like this island a lot. The waterfront is so nice, there are still sea lions around but they aren't as numerous so we have our dinghy back rather than paying $4/day for the water taxi and interestingly, most things are cheaper here. So far the anchorage is better than Wreck Bay and it's more scenic anyway. We plan to head to Isabela on Friday so we have a couple more days to explore and get ready.