Ecuador Day Seven

Today turned out to be one of my favorite days of the whole vacation.  Although my left knee and back were sore from all the walking yesterday, I kept going.  For breakfast we had pancakes, toast, guava jam, quiche and fruit.  Most people walked to the pier to get on a smaller boat but Pablo got a taxi for me and another traveler.  We got on the boats to look around the bay.  We say American Oyster catchers, Galapagos penguins and lava herons.  It was so strange to see lava rocks, penguins, sea lions, and cactus all in the same view.  Galapagos has some amazing landscapes.  We walked around a rocky peninsula.  A white lichen grew on one side of the lava rocks.  As of 2005, this lichen was determined to be a new species.  We saw lots of lava lizards and marine iguanas.  At one point, we looked down into a protected bay off the reef to see a Galapagos shark move toward us, turn, and move away just like a model on a runway.  Maybe you can see it in the photo above.  We got back into the boats and into our wetsuits.  Once in the water we swam with the fishes.  Schools of angel fish swam by me.  It's hard to judge the size but I would guess they were almost a foot long.  I saw parrot fish, Mexican hawk fish, pink octopus, sea cucumbers and sea urchins of green, black and blue. Snorkeling is so relaxing.  We were in very shallow water and we had to be careful not to touch the coral.  The blue eyed damsel fish acted especially aggressive.  Sea lions and penguins swam by us.  I wished I lived here so I could snorkel in my free time.  I forgot my underwater camera for this snorkel but that was okay because I could focus on the experience instead of monkeying with the camera.  We saw more of those chocolate chip sea stars.  Pablo told us to swim over here.  Where he took us was deeper and there was no coral and no fish.  The bottom was sandy and uninteresting.  We kept swimming. The water was very clear.  Up ahead we saw a sea turtle resting on the bottom.  We kept swimming.  Soon we saw six sea turtles.  Then we saw a dozen sea turtles.  We floated quietly in the water watching. The sea turtle would raise it's head, give me eye contact, and then slowly raise up, fly to the surface, take a sip of air and go back to the sandy bottom.  It was amazing.  Some turtles had fish rubbing them and massaging them with their mouths.  I don't know if they were eating something off the turtle but it looked affectionate.  I adopted one turtle.  When the turtle swam, it's fins looked like wings.  When my turtle flapped it's wings, I flapped my arms.  I imitated everything the turtle did for about five minutes.  This was an incredible experience; truly amazing.  We swam with the turtles for at least half an hour.  I will never forget it.  One turtle rose to the surface right in front of me.  I put my head up and we were almost nose to nose.  Then it swam down and I had to arch my body away so I didn't touch it.  We got back into the boats and headed to the pier . We walked to our hotel and had time for a quick shower before lunch. For lunch we had a pureed vegetable soup, coleslaw, potato, broccoli, carrots, rice and a fried egg.  The carnivores had fish or chicken.  After lunch we headed to a Galapagos tortoise protection center.  Here they had rescued tortoises from a lava flow.  These tortoises are producing enough young to put 300 back into the wild each year.  The tortoises fly in nets below helicopters.  I can only imagine that to be more scary for the tortoise than the zip line was for me.  These tortoises have a life span of 150 years. They mature sexually at age 25.   We saw tortoise eggs and week old tortoises.  After visiting the center, we took a ride up this amazing road. The road was sometimes on the beach and sometimes in the woods.  The trees covered the top of the road. Sometimes we were surrounded by mangrove trees and other parts of the road were in a cactus forest.  The prickly pear cactus grow 30 feet tall here.  At the end of the road we came to the "Wall of Tears."  (See fourth picture).  This huge lava stone wall was built by prisoners of Ecuador from 1946 until the prison was closed in 1960.  I cannot imagine moving these heavy rocks in this harsh climate with no sunscreen.  Some men died in the process are their bodies are still lying inside the rock wall.  This was a very sad place for me.  To cheer us up, Pablo brought us to the beach of love.  We watches the waves crash to shore and the birds flying overhead.  For dinner that night we met at the Endemic Bar.  My friend and I took the path along the shore to get there rather than the street.  It was dark and eventually the street lights didn't light the way anymore.  We saw red lights in the distance and figured that was our destination. It was.  The bar has hanging lights.  Red bulbs illuminate a cactus bark shade.  I had vegetarian spaghetti.  The others had fish or chicken.  As we walked back to our hotel, I appreciated the small town feel here.  The streets are made of sand. The sidewalks are of lava rock and are a good 2 feet above the street level.  A heron walked along the sidewalk hoping to find insects below the street lights.  Today was a good day.