Visiting Galapagos

So, maybe you are visiting Ecuador and want to make a side visit to Galapagos? Or maybe you are thinking of a standalone visit to these islands? I can promise that, either way, if you decide to travel to Galapagos, this will be one of the best experiences in your lifetime.

And why do I say that? Galapagos are not the standard paradisiac tropical islands. We are not talking Seychelles or Bora Bora here. And while the scenery is certainly quite interesting, there are much more beautiful places on Earth. The main reason to be here is just one: wildlife.

The animals inhabiting these islands are quite unique and are incredibly fearless. The main reason for this is that there has never been a population of large predators that hunted them down, and so, they are not really afraid of other animals, including men. In Galapagos you can swim with sea lions, stand right next to a blue-footed boobie, dive with hammerhead sharks, be surrounded by iguanas, share a rock with some penguins and walk beside a giant tortoise!

And, though you may initially not think so, some of the most interesting wildlife encounters you will have, will be with birds. If you think of bird watching, I am sure that the idea that comes to mind is looking at a couple of birds 300 yards away through a pair of binoculars from a hideout spot. Fun for some people, no doubt, but boring for most... But in Galapagos, the birds are not afraid of you, so you can walk up right next to their nests and see them feeding their young right in front of your face! And these are amazing birds: red necked frigatebirds, blue footed boobies (funniest bird ever!), albatrosses...

The Galapagos Islands are not cheap. Even if you opt for the cheapest package available you will get little change out of $1000, and you can easily spend three or four times more for a one week visit. But I can tell you that it will be money well spent and that you will have lifetime memories of this trip.

How to get there

Although it is possible to get there by boat, 99% of the people who visit Galapagos come by air. The only flights available depart from Quito, Ecuador (via Guayaquil). There are two companies currently offering flights: TAME and AeroGal. Both will charge around $400 for a return ticket from Quito ($200 for children)

There are two airports in the islands, one in the Baltra island, serving the main town of Puerto Ayora, and the other in the San Cristobal island, serving the smaller town of Puerto Moreno. There are many more options for tours and things to do at Puerto Ayora, so, unless your tour departs from San Cristobal, look for a flight into Baltra.

Upon arrival, you will have to pay the park entrance fee which is currently $110 ($55 for children), so have your cash ready!

How to organize your trip

Since the Galapagos are considered an endangered enviroment, there are many restrictions placed on what you can do on the islands. There is only a small number of places where tourists are allowed to go (called visitor sites) and you must visit them as part of an organized tour and will always be accompanied by a guide.

There are two main possibilities for your visit to the islands:

• You can stay at an hotel at Puerto Ayora or Puerto Moreno and take day trips to the nearby islands
• You can board a boat and do a cruise around the islands, sleeping in the boat, usually in a different island every day

The first option is the most economical and is what most of the nationals do but I do not recomend it at all. By only doing day trips your are very limited on the range of islands that you can visit and you will get there at midday, the worst time for visiting the islands as it is the hottest time of the day, bad for photgraphy due to the harsh noon light. This is also the time when the islands are more crowded with all the day visitors.

So, unless you are really short of cash, the only reason I can think for not going on a boat is if you are ureally unconfortable sleeping in one of them.

The shortest boat tour available is a 4 day/ 3 nights tour. The most standard tours are 5 days/ 4 nigths and 8 days/ 7 nights. There used to be some boats that did longer trips (10 and 14 days) but almost no one is offering that now (it seems that everybody is short of time these days!). Unless you are really short of cash or time I would recomend that you go for the 7 night tour as it will allow you to get a taste of all the important islands. With the 4 nights option you will miss some of the gems.

The day trips are easily arranged on the islands but for a longer boat tour I recommend that you book it before you go there. If you come to the islands without a booked tour, be prepared to wait for a long time as most of the boats are usually filled up in advance (in some cases many months in advance)

In order to decide which boat to take, you first have to decide the kind of boat that you prefer: small sailing boat (for up to 16 people), small motor boat (for up to 30 people) or larger cruise ship (for up to 100 people). For me the choice is clear: saling boats are cleaner, less noisy, more stable when the sea is rough and more beautiful! Motor boats tend to offer a bit more space on board, so go for them if you think that you will feel claustrophobic. I don´t like large cruise ships as they ruin all the spontaneity of travel, but if you like these kind of ships they offer the most spacious cabins and are good for travelling with kids.

Next you have to decide on the categoory of the boat, which usually determines the price of the tour. Boats in the Galapagos are usually divided into four categories, depending on the services they offer, the space available on board, the quality and number of the guides acompanying you, etc... These categories are usually called Economy , Tourist, First Class and Luxury.

I don´t recommend opting for an Economy tour as they are usually done on low quality boats, with cramped spaces and not very good guides (in one trip we did in this kind of boat, we had a couple of gay guys on board and the captain spent all the tour calling them "mariposones", which is spanish for "pansy" or "sissy"). I don´t either reccomend a Luxury tour as the quality of service is already exceptional at the First Class level, so unless you have money to burn there is no need to opt for the most expensive ships.

For a 7 night tour with a Tourist or First Class boat you will pay between $1500 and $3000 per person on a double occupancy basis, with discounts for kids. There are several places where you can get more information on all the different available boats, but I can recommend Galapagos Discover. They have a lot of information about all the different boats presented in a very practical way. They can also arrange all your trip to the Galapagos, including flights if you want.

One final option is chartering a whole boat. This offers the advantage of being able to customize many options of your trip, the possibility of going to seldom visited places and the advantage of not having to share the boat with strangers. You will need a large group of at least 12 people to do that, but if you manage to fill 80% of the boat it can be cheaper than joining a tour.

Where to go

When you join a boat tour, you will join a pre-arranged itinarary where few (if any) changes can be made. I will give you here some basic information on what you can see on each of the islands so that you can decide which boat offers the itinerary which most suits you.

Apart from some basic info, I will give each island a score of 1 to 5 points (with 5 being the best), based on a personal opinion on how interesting is each one.

Baltra (1/5)

This is where most of the planes land and from here you will quickly go either to your ship which will be waiting on a nearby harbour or to Puerto Ayora. There are no visitor sites in this island.

Seymour (4/5)

This is the best place to see huge colonies of breeding birds, the most interesting being the frigatebirds (the males inflate theis red necks to attract the females) and blue-footed boobies (which do a very funny dance to attract the females). You can also see sea lions and iguanas.

Mosquera (3/5)

A small island between Baltra and Seymour, there is a big colony of sea lions and very good snorkelling

Genovesa (4/5)

This island is a bit remote so it is not included in most of the tours. But it is one of the best islands to see a multitude of spectacular birds like the red-billed tropicbird and it is the best island to see the red-footed boobies. There are also sea lions and seals and outstanding snorkelling

South Plaza (4/5)

This island is on the east of Santa Cruz and is very popular for day trips. There is a huge abundance of wildlife here: lots of marine iguanas and land iguanas, tons of sea lions, a grat cliff where you can see birds fishing and flying... one of the favourites of wildlife enthusiasts

Santa Fé (3/5)

This island is also popular for day trips. There is a big opuntia (a kind of cactus) forest and a species of land iguana that is found nowhere else, but other than that, there are best islands for observing wildlife.

San Cristóbal (2/5)

This island is not usually visited by the boats leaving from Baltra, so you will usually only visit it if your tour departs from here. There are sea lion and boobies colonies but there are better wildlife opportunities elsewhere. The only special thing about this island is that there is a visitor site where you can see the Galapagos tortoises on the wild. But it takes a long two hour hike to get there, so I only recommend it if you are very interested in this species

Española (5/5)

This is my favourite island. There is a really huge colony of blue-footed boobies, incredible snorkelling with sea lions and white tipped sharks and the only colony in the Galapagos of the waved albatross, a truly spectacular bird with an amazing wing span. You can see them queuing up to take off from a cliff, this reminded me of planes queuing up for take off! There is a beautiful blow hole where waves force water to go up almost 60ft. Be careful not to stand too close to the hole, we heard of a tourist who was thrown up by one of the water spouts and fractured his skull!

Floreana (4/5)

This island has several attractions. One of them is Post Office Bay, where in the past many ship captains left messages which other boats delivered on their way home. Now it is full of random messages that people leave there on all kind of surfaces and objects. I did not find this particularly interesting but some people love it. There is another site with a beautiful olive green beach and a lagoon where you can see flamingoes. The third attraction is Devil´s Crown, a half submerged crater with the best snorkelling in all the islands

Isabela (5/5)

This is the biggest island in the Galapagos by far and is one of the most interesting places to visit. There are lots of wildlife opportunities here, including the possibility of viewing lots of marine turtles and penguins. And it is the most volcanically active island. There are great hiking opportunities and lots of outstanding places to see volcanic activity. But all of the visitor sites lie on the far side of the island and, unless you do a long tour of 10-14 days, if you visit this island you will miss some of the other interesting places in the Galapagos. Also, the day visits usually afforded by a boat tour do not do real justice to this island. So, my recomendation is to go there on a side trip after you finish your main tour. You can get there by boat or small plane and there are some cheap accomodations on the island where you can organize some hikes to see the most interesting places.

Fernandina (3/5)

This is also a very volcanic island, and from time to time a big eruption happens here. The most interesting thing about this island, apart from the landscape, is the huge colony of marine iguanas, which you can see by the thousands. There are also sea lions and penguins

Wolf and Darwin (3/5)

These islands are located on the northwest of the group, very far from the rest (they are not shown on the map above). They don´t have any visitor sites, so they are only visited on scuba trips as diving is exceptional here.

Santiago (4/5)

This island is very interesting mainly due to two aspects: first, it has some very interesting volcanic formations: lava pools, pinnacles and solidified lava sheets make this landscape foreign and martian. The other interesting point is that here you will find the largets concentration of fur seals in the islands and snorkelling with them is great fun.

Bartolomé (4/5)

Again, there are two things that make this an interesting island to visit: first, there is a trail to its highest point, where you will find the most picturesque view of the islands, with incredible views of the volcanic formations of the neighbouring Santiago island. Then, this is also the best place to see the Galapagos penguins (and swim with them!)

Sombrero chino (2/5)

This small island on the southeast of Santiago takes its name ("Chinese hat") from its classic volcanic cone. You can usually see sea lions and penguins here

Rábida (3/5)

This is the best island to see pelicans as there is a huge colony of them. You can also see sea lions and a lagoon with flamingoes

Daphne (4/5)

This island is quite interesting to visit as it has some very curious volcanic formations and two craters where hundreds of blue-footed boobies nest. The paths have become very eroded, so the park authorities have limited visits to one visit per boat per month, so you have to be lucky to get here.

Santa Cruz (3/5)

This is the island where you will find the main town of the islands, Puerto Ayora and many people spend some time here at some point in their visit to Galapagos. The opportunities available here include a research station where you will be able to see the turtles up close and even touch them and a very nice beach where you can swim with iguanas and pelicans and is one of the very few places in Galapagos where you are allowed to go without a guide. The interior of the island offers other surprises, like some lava tubes and a tortoise reserve.

Other islands

There is a number of other islands, including Marchena, Pinta and Duncan which have no visitor sites and are only occasionally visited by scuba trips.

Galapagos is also a world-class destination for scuba divers. The sea bed is not particularly beautiful here but there is a huge abundance of marine life: several kinds of sharks, including hammerheads, large schools of rays and mantas, marine turtles, marine iguanas, thousands of reef fishes... For me, the most interesting thing about diving in Galapagos is diving with the sea lions and the fur seals. They are incredibly playful and funny and you can just sit in a rock and spend many minutes watching their swift moves and dances.

In order to scuba dive in the islands you have three options:

• You can board a boat which has facilities for scuba diving and which offers the opportunity of doing some dives during your standard tour. You will usually do one dive per day and it will be timed so as to not interfere with your land visits. This is the best option for occasional divers who want to get a taste of the underwater life whitout interfering too much with their tour
• You can do day trips from Puerto Ayora where you will find a number of scuba dive shops. There are great diving sites nearby like Gordon Rock or Nameless Rock . This is a great option for more advanced divers who stay a couple of days at Puerto Ayora after their main tour
• Take a specialized diving tour which will get you to the most interesting diving spots in the islands, including the outstanding Wolf and Darwin islands where you will find the best diving in Galapagos. These trips are only for advanced divers as conditions are sometimes difficult in some of the spots, with strong currents. But it would be a shame if you come to Galapagos and only see the underwater part of the islands, so I would recommend that you combine this kind of tour with a more classic one, even if it is a short one.

Snorkelling

Galapagos is a snorkelling paradise. Apart from a huge number of reef fish which will keep you interested for hours, the opportunity of swiming with sea lions, fur seals and penguins is one of the best experiences you will have in your life.

Most boats carry snorkelling equipment, some offer it for free and others charge a small fee. In any case, if you like this activity, I recommend that you bring your own mask and snorkel from home.

Kayaking

Some boats carry sea kayaks and it can be a very rewarding experience to be able to paddle with all the sea creatures you find in Galapagos and it will give you a new point of view of the islands. You can kayak in all the places where you can snorkel and the only rule is that you are not allowed to land.

Surfing

This is a very new trend but there is more and more people each year coming to the islands to catch some waves! The surfing spots don´t offer exceptional waves, but the opportunity to share them with sea lions, turtles, iguanas or penguins more than makes up for this!

The information provided in this page is just an introduction to what you need to know to visit these islands. Below you will find a list of books, maps and DVDs which can help you make the most out of your visit to this outstanding place. Enjoy!