We had some time yesterday afternoon to make the trek to Las Grietas, a fissure in the rocks where fresh water makes its way out to sea and mixes with salt from the nearby salt flats and the seawater as it intrudes, making it very buoyant. The weather was highly overcast and the sky was bright white, with very dark volcanic rock, so our camera had a hard time handling the contrast, so the photos aren’t great, but we had a great time. Frank, Jason and I scaled the rock faces and jumped into the 30m deep watery canyon below.

It rained most of the time we were there, and that made for quite the adventure for me on the way back. The walk is probably about 1 km on rough lava stones, bedded in red clay. I wore flip flops, and with the rain, the whole path turned into mush. I had 1″ of clay mucked up on the soles of my flops, complete with thorns and dirt, and my feet were sliding around on the tops of my shoes like I was on ice—coated in cooking oil. I ended up making 3/4 of the trip back barefoot—one of the most painful treks of my life…but I laughed the whole time because it was so improbable. Me, getting stranded on a lava plain in the salt flats of the Galapagos, shoeless, in the darkening skies, in the rain. AWESOME.

Jason walking to Las Grietas

Las Grietas

Lara jumping off the cliff