Hike Sierra Negra and Chico Volcanoes,
This day tour explored the unique volcanic landscape of Isabela Island and the 2nd largest caldera in the world
I don't know what you think of when you think of the Galapagos, but giant volcanoes was one of the things that was in my head. This day tour (around $40-$60) took us to the second largest caldera in the world, and then explored the lava fields of Sierra Negra.
I was picked up at your hotel in town in the morning, and the drive to the island's interior to start our hike. After a long upwards grade on a wide trail, we reached a lookout point on the caldera's rim. It is MASSIVE. Too big to fit in a single picture massive. After snapping a couple pictures and stopping for a snack, we continued off the rim, and descended towards Volcan Chico. We left the more forested area and crossed a huge lava field towards the more recently active area. We saw the remnants of lava waterfalls, lava rivers, and where there were actual eruptions. It's quite an incredible landscape, more reminiscent of Iceland than the Galapagos!
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The tour began by taking a 45 minute vehicle transport into the highlands until we reached the Galapagos National Park Control Point at 900 meters above sea level.
From there we ascended on foot for approximately 45 minutes until we reached the edge of the Sierra Negra caldera. The caldera landscape is mostly flat and we walked for approximately 1 hour around a section of the volcano edge.
Here we enjoyed our included lunch and then, we took the trail to Volcan Chico and the new trail recently opened by the Galapagos National Park to Sierra Negra Volcano’s last eruption site.
After that the transport picked us up to return to Puerto Villamil.
Tags: The Galápagos National Park Control Point volcán volcano vulcão caminhada walking hiking trek natureza nature montain montanha guided tours vulcão ativo active volcano Pahoehoe Pahoehoe Galapagos Tours trail naturalist guide Tomás de Berlanga Pahoehoe Tours agência de viagens tour agency Isabela Isla Isabela Isabela (Albemarle) Island Queen Isabela Reina Isabel I de Castilla Isabela Island (Galápagos) the Duke of Albermarle la isla Isabela Ilha Isabela Ilhas do Arquipélagos das Galápagos The Galápagos Islands las Galápagos Archipiélago de Cólon Las Islas Galápagos el océano Pacífico Oceano Pacífico The Pacific Ocean the Galápagos Marine Reserve Galápagos National Park el Parque Nacional de Galápagos biosphere reserve Charles Darwin The Origin of Species UNESCO World Heritage Site Equador Ecuador ilha island isla arquipélago
The southern and eastern side of the volcano is covered with lush tropical forest vegetation and fertile soil at moderate altitudes, the higher reaches are more barren with bushes and grasses of modest height of 2–3 meters.
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Sierra Negra Volcano has one of the biggest and most amazing calderas of an active volcano on earth. It is also the only active volcano that we visited in the Galapagos Islands.
Our tour took us on a 16km hike along the edge of the caldera (volcanic crater). Great views of the landscape and excellent photos can be taken during the hike.
As part of the tour, we also visited the area of Volcan Chico.
We went over the edge and 300 meters down outside the main caldera and we kept walking along the edge and visited the last eruption site of Sierra Negra Volcano in 2018 on the newest trail opened by the Galapagos National Park.
So why should we visit Sierra Negra Volcano? The first reason is the spectacular views of this massive caldera and Isabela Island itself. On a clear day we have the chance to see the Sierra Negra Volcano’s caldera, the whole chain of six volcanoes that form Isabela Island, and also Elizabeth Bay and Fernandina Island all in the same picture!
The second and maybe the most important reason we should visit Sierra Negra Volcano is to understand and witness the continuing geological process of the Galapagos Islands.
Oh yes, and for the picture at the edge of the caldera too!
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The morphology of Sierra Negra is the upturned soup bowl shape of the other Isabela volcanoes, however it does not have the steep sloping sides that are on others. Instead the slope goes from approximately 2 degrees at its base and although increasing averages only 5 degrees.
The volcano has the largest caldera of all of the Galapagos volcanoes, with dimensions of 7.2 x 9.3 km, with the long axis being south west to north east. The caldera is also the shallowest of the Isabela volcanoes at only 100 meters. The caldera is structurally complex with a 14 km long ridge within it. A large fumarolic area, Volcan de Azufre, lies between this ridge and the western caldera wall.
This fumarolic area is one of the locations where terrestrial sulfur flows have been identified, this is associated with the melting of sulfur deposits.
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How the Galapagos mockingbird got its name…
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Metaphors aside, this quote from Harper Lee’s famous book states that “it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”. Fortunately, a hundred years before the book had even been written, a young Charles Darwin didn’t share this view, for if he had he may never have published his famous book. During the voyage of HMS Beagle, Darwin shot and collected hundreds of specimens including a good number of mockingbirds, or mocking-thrushes as he called them. It was these specimens more than any other that led him to develop his theory of evolution by natural selection.
Darwin noted that mockingbirds differed slightly between islands in their size, beak shape and markings but still closely resembled the mockingbirds that he had collected from mainland South America. This, along with other observations such as the differing shell shapes of giant tortoises, made him question the long-held belief that all species had been created in their current form, and it was these thoughts that led him to formulate his revolutionary theory.
Four species of mockingbird can be found in Galapagos, none of which occur anywhere else on Earth. Genetic analysis has shown that all have descended from a common ancestor, likely to be the original Galapagos settler, who’s closest living relatives are the mockingbirds found in North America.
The Galapagos mockingbird (Mimus parvulus) is by far the most common of the four species within the Archipelago and can be readily spotted in the forests and shrublands of many of the larger islands. The other three species are the Espanola (M.macdonaldi), San Cristobal (M.melanotis) and Floreana mockingbird’s (M.trifasciatus), named after the islands from which they originate. Sadly, all four species are listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the most threatened being the critically endangered Floreana mockingbird.
Once common on Floreana, the mockingbird population is now restricted to two small satellite islands and may number less than 200 individuals. The principal threats to all of the mockingbird species are predation from introduced predators (namely rats and cats) and loss of their favoured nesting and food source, the prickly pear cactus (Opuntia spp.). Fortunately, a long-term project which GCT has been involved with is focusing on restoring Floreana to a more natural state, the hope being to eventually reintroduce the Floreana mockingbird back onto its native island.
Originally named mock-birds (1640’s), mockingbirds are so named due to an interesting behaviour carried out by some species whereby they mimic the calls of insects, amphibians and other bird species. None of Galapagos’ mockingbirds perform their namesake behaviour, but they do have a series of calls which they will use under different conditions.
Amazingly, marine iguanas appear to have learnt to recognise the alarm calls of mockingbirds and have been shown to act upon them. Sounded when a predator is spotted, iguanas will often go into a heightened state of alert when an alarm call is raised. This makes sense given that the two share many of the same predators, such as the Galapagos hawk (Buteo galapagoensis), but it actually has a uniqueness to it. Whilst there are many examples in the natural world of one species reacting to the calls of another, such as meerkats reacting to fork-tailed drongo alarm calls in the Kalahari, this is the first time that it has been recorded in a non-vocalising species such as the marine iguana (an article on this behaviour can be found here). Another little Galapagos oddity!
There seems to be a strange irony in the fact that the bird that played an integral part in Darwin’s theory of evolution has evolved to no longer show the behaviour that gave it its name. What is certain is that these bold and charming birds are always a pleasure to watch in Galapagos, and are just one more reason to conserve this wonderful archipelago.
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The Galápagos mockingbird (Mimus parvulus) is a species of bird in the family Mimidae. It is endemic to the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador.
The Galápagos mockingbird is one of four mockingbird species endemic to the Galápagos Islands. These four are all closely related, and DNA evidence shows they likely all descended from an ancestor species which reached the islands in a single colonization event. When John Gould first described the species in 1837, based on specimens brought back from the islands by Charles Darwin, he named it Orpheus parvulus. However, because of the rules of binomial nomenclature, Orpheus was declared a junior synonym, and in 1841, George Robert Gray moved all of the Orpheus mockingbirds to the older genus Mimus. In 1890, Robert Ridgway created the genus Nesomimus for the mockingbirds found on the Galápagos Islands, and most taxonomists adopted the change. Recent DNA studies, however, show that the Nesomimus mockingbirds fall within the traditional genus Mimus, making the latter paraphyletic, so some taxonomists have moved them back into Mimus.
There are six subspecies, each endemic to a particular island or islands:
M. p. parvulus is found on Santa Cruz, North Seymour, Daphne Major, Isabela and Fernandina.
Like all of the mockingbirds found in the Galápagos, this species is long-tailed and relatively long-legged, with a long, slim, decurved beak.
The Galápagos mockingbird is the most widespread of the mockingbird species found in the Galápagos; it is found on most of the major (and many of the minor) islands of the archipelago.
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