Puerto Villamil guide
Puerto Villamil is the town on Isabela, the biggest island in the archipelago and the one with the smallest population of the three inhabited ports, roughly 2,500 people. It has a different texture from the other two: sand streets, a beach that runs for kilometres, and a pace that only loosened into tourism in the 1990s, when a small runway opened for inter-island light aircraft. Today it is the base for two of the best day tours in the archipelago, Los Túneles and Sierra Negra, and the most relaxed place to do nothing in all of Galápagos.
Getting there
No airport serves Isabela commercially; you arrive on the ferry from Puerto Ayora, two to two-and-a-half hours across, departing 07:00 and 15:00 (the return runs 06:00 and 15:00). Two arrival costs surprise people, so budget both: the ferry tourist fare is $50 per leg since August 2026, and stepping off in Villamil you pay Isabela’s local intake fee, $10 for foreigners, collected at the pier. It is not charged on Santa Cruz or San Cristóbal. Details in our ferry guide. One more practicality: Isabela has no banks or ATMs, so bring all the cash you will need from Puerto Ayora.
The free side of town
Villamil is the rare Galápagos town where the best sites cost nothing:
- The beach in front of town is the longest stretch of white sand in the archipelago, and you share it with marine iguanas rather than crowds.
- The wetlands complex behind the beach is a chain of brackish lagoons connected by boardwalks, with flamingos, pintail ducks and four mangrove species. It is also the only place on the planet where the critically endangered mangrove finch survives.
- Concha de Perla, a shallow natural pool reached by a wooden boardwalk near the pier, is the free snorkel site: sea lions, turtles and schools of fish in calm water (best at low-to-mid tide; a rope marks the boundary toward Tintoreras). Our Concha de Perla guide has the practical details.
- The Arnaldo Tupiza breeding center keeps Isabela’s two native tortoise species, adults and a nursery, a short walk from town.
Biking is the local transport of choice, and the classic ride is the flat road out to the Muro de las Lágrimas, the Wall of Tears, a lava-block wall built by prisoners of the penal colony that operated here from 1946. It took more than fourteen years of forced labour to build, and the viewpoint above it explains why the name stuck.
The two paid highlights
Sierra Negra is the walk people come for: one of the widest active volcano calderas on earth, a 16 km round trip on foot from the trailhead with a mandatory naturalist guide, typically $30-50 (check current rates). On clear days the crater floor reads like a grey sea; in the wet season it is cloud soup, so start early.
Los Túneles, our pick for the best snorkel tour in Galápagos, runs by boat to a lava landscape of arches and channels where the water goes glassy: seahorses (the best site in the archipelago for them), whitetip sharks resting in the tunnels, turtles and penguins in season. Tours run roughly $150 per person (check current rates). We cover it in our Los Túneles guide.
Las Tintoreras, the islet chain in the bay with whitetip sharks in a lava channel, is the shorter and cheaper water option, and kayak trips from the beach reach the same bay at sunset.
How many nights
Two nights is the minimum for Sierra Negra plus a free day; three lets you add Los Túneles without a schedule panic. Ferries only run twice daily, so a “day trip” to Isabela from Santa Cruz is not a thing. Build Isabela as a block of days, not an excursion. If the logistics stack up faster than you want, Galapagos Dana Tours books the tours and the ferries together: and for the end of the trip, our cloudforest hotel in Mindo, Las Terrazas de Dana, is the decompression stop we recommend to every guest.
Last verified: September 2026