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A secluded cove of tuff cliffs on the Bolivar Channel, at the foot of Volcan Darwin, TAGUS COVE is Isabela's most visited site, and its popularity over the years is in evidence on the cliffs, where boat names have been etched and painted into the rock. Many are the names of millionaires' yachts that stopped here on their grand world cruises in the 1930s, but the oldest is from 1836, only a year after Darwin's visit. From the landing point, a trail leads steeply up a breach in the cliffs into the scrubby vegetation typical of the dry coastal regions, including lantana, lechoso, Galapagos cotton and an endemic variety of palo santo , which provide a good habitat for a number of Darwin's finches and flycatchers . The path rises around the rim of Darwin's Lake , eventually giving wonderful views of its emerald surface: the strange thing about this crater lake is that it has both a higher salinity and water level than the sea, and no one knows how this came about. The trail then leads further up to a tuff cone from where you can see a maroon carpet of aa lava extending off to Volcan Wolf and Volcan Ecuador in the distance. Around the cliffs by Tagus Cove, made stripy by thousands of compacted layers of ash, blue-footed boobies, noddy terns, pelicans, penguins and sea lions can all be seen. To its north, marine turtles make nests on the black-sand beach of Punta Tortuga . The beach is backed by mangroves, one of the few places to see the endangered mangrove finch .
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