Well, without a doubt, the Galapagos were AMAZING. We travelled there in October 2018 on the Nemo III 8-Day North Route cruise and had a brilliant, brilliant time.

So, first off, I’ve pulled together a couple of videos that probably explain how amazing this place is much better through the medium of moving images than I can do with words:

BUT, I still wanted to pull together a bit of a blog to help you get your head round planning for any Galapagos trip you might take.

Where to start?

I found researching for our Galapagos trip quite overwhelming – there’s so many islands, so you have to first get your head round that. It’s really difficult to find out information about where wildlife is at what time of the year. And, a lot of the places that come up when you google things are trying to sell you something – and they skirt over a lot of the information I wanted to know.

Here’s some of the basics:

Getting there and away:

The main airport is on Baltra Island (this is also sometimes known on things like sky scanner as The Galapagos). There is also another airport on San Cristobal (This is known as San Cristobal, Ecuador on the price comparison sites).

If you arrive at Baltra and are not instantly getting picked up for a cruise you will HAVE to make your way to the island of Santa Cruz and the town of Puerto Ayora. This is where the only hotels are. This journey was $11 one way in October 2018 – $5 for the bus to the other side of Baltra Island, $1 to cross by ferry to Santa Cruz, and then $5 to get across Santa Cruz to Puerto Ayora. The whole journey took around 1 hour 45 minutes. We were luckily dropped in the town of Puerto Ayora, but the bus station is actually a little way out of the centre (half an hour walk, 5 minute $1 taxi).

There are two things I wish I’d known/thought about before we booked our flights:

1. A lot of people fly into Baltra and fly away from San Cristobal. This is quite a logical option and gives you the chance to see the most variety of the islands. We didn’t do this and don’t regret it – but I also hadn’t considered it in the planning.
2. If you are booking into a cruise – check carefully what the pick up and drop off times are and locations. For example, our cruise finished at 8am on the Sunday morning at Baltra Airport – we could have easily flown out the same day but I wasn’t completely sure when I booked the flights so I put us flying out on Monday. This meant we had another return journey to Puerto Ayora – costing $44!

 

Cruise or not to cruise?

This is one of the age old Galapagos debates – particularly with the more thrifty travellers.

I thought this was quite a good overview of the not cruising option – by the Practical Wanderlust guys.

But, well, maybe because we did a cruise, I am inclined to advocate for one. Here’s what I think are the main benefits of a cruise:

• The luxury (if you go for the right boat) and amazing food
• The relaxed nature – the whole schedule is sorted and you don’t need to make your own plans each day
• The sunsets and sunrises out on the water
• The ability to visit places day trips wouldn’t get to (for example, we went to Genovesa on our tour – only 3 or 4 boats in the whole of the Galapagos have the licence to do that)

I think one thing people get nervous about with the idea of a cruise is the concept of 100s of people on a massive boat. That’s really not the way cruises work in the Galapagos. On the first section of our cruise we were only 9 people – that rose to 15 for the second section. If you choose the right boat you really will have the benefits.

I remember reading a comment thread about the Galapagos before we booked where people were shouting at each other about the fact cruises or not cruises were best. One comment sticks in my mind – “All the people who didn’t do a cruise and say that it’s just as good as a cruise simply don’t know”. Because we had a few days on either side (not doing a cruise) I think we can make a fairly balanced judgement – do a cruise. If you’re going to put the effort into getting to the Galapagos, do it properly.

Having said that….if money is a real issue, you can get an amazing experience with a few day trips here and there.

Our Schedule and Cruise

 

We did the 8 day “North” cruise with Nemo III – you can find the schedule here: http://nemogalapagoscruises.com/flipbook/nemoIII-north-itinerary.html#pags/. The day before we did this we also took a day trip from Puerto Ayora to Sante Fe to go snorkelling.

Few things:

• 8 days is quite a long cruise as far as Galapagos standards are concerned – BUT we really did see something new and interesting each day.
• We perhaps weren’t completely aware that the 8 day cruise would be split into two – ie we’d have a group of people for the first 3.5 days and a different set for the next 4.5. Only 1 other person did the whole 8 days with us.
• If you were going to put a gun to my head and ask me to choose between the two sections – I’d say the loop round Isabela was more spectacular. But, we saw many more birds close up on the first part in Genovesa and we snorkelled with hammerhead sharks. So, it’s difficult.
• They were very accommodating with food requests and the food was incredibly good.
• The schedule was perfectly timed – an activity in the morning, a really long lunch break, snacks when you were just starting to get peckish, and activities in the afternoon.

Choosing your cruise

It really can be a bit overwhelming when looking at all the options. Here’s a few considerations:

• Price vs Quality – we went for quality and we are really please we did. We heard some stories about boats with really basic conditions and bed bugs and things. No thank you
• The Date and Number of Days – this can be quite helpful in narrowing down the options, how much time you have and when? We found this website https://www.galapagoslastminutes.com/ really useful in helping to see what was possible
• The Route – this was particularly overwhelming. The Galapagos is made up of 13 major islands (and even more smaller ones) and as part of the cruise schedules cruises can stop at only 54 designated points. It is far too much effort to look into every single place to try and choose the absolutely perfect cruise. Generally I would trust that as long as you’re happy roughly with where you’re going, the places the cruise stops will be good. Cruises have one of two options – a “north loop” or a “south loop”. It’s pretty hard to find information about which is ‘better’, possibly because people only do one or the other. This is our understanding of the differences:
  • The North Loop concentrates around the largest island of Isabela which is often quoted as the prettiest/more abundant. It passes through mostly uninhabited places and is only accessible by the cruises
  • The South Loop goes via San Cristobal and Floreana and is slightly more populated. You can probably do more of the South Loop destinations “on your own” in day trips from Santa Cruz and San Cristobal.

Wildlife

Given what the Galapagos is mainly all about, I found it kind of baffling that there was so little useful information about what you could see, where and when.

However, I think one of the reasons for this is it is just SO abundant. It would be absolutely impossible to visit the Galapagos and not see wildlife. When we were booking I hadn’t fully comprehended this and so was keen to do an 8 day cruise just to make sure we saw something. This is rather amusing now I look back at it!!!

The problem is of course that there is different wildlife at different times of the year doing different things. This is what I couldn’t really get my head around or find and good resources about. Crazy right?

Anyway, I probably can assume that unless you’re a crazy birder or naturalist with a very specific interest in very specific animals, you’re probably fairly laid back about what you’re going to see. There’s lots of things we saw that I didn’t even know were a thing on the Galapagos (flamingoes anyone?) so they were a nice surprise. I particularly liked this quote from Henry Nicholls in his great book about the Galapagos (called, the Galapagos!):

“If you don’t have a wish list of sites or tick list of species, don’t feel the need to invent one. Every visitor site in the Galapagos will have something to marvel at . You will not be disappointed . During the course of a typical week-long Galapagos cruise , you will see plenty of geological formations and a wide variety of plant life ; you will have ample opportunity to peek beneath the waves, gape at pelicans, boobies, and frigatebirds, and step over marine iguanas and get close to tortoises”

So, the good thing is, I can almost 100% guarantee you the following (without a cruise):

Giant Tortoises – THEY ARE EVERYWHERE. From the airport to Puerto Ayora I saw TEN just from the bus. You can take trips to the coffee farms where the tortoises like to hang out and you will definitely see one

Marine Iguanas – Again, they like to hang out all along the coast around Puerto Ayora and you can see them on the pier. Admittedly, they’re not as big as some of the ones we saw on Isabela….but you definitely can see them. We saw pretty big ones on Sante Fe which you can get to on a day trip from Puerto Ayora.

Black Tipped Sharks – If you go down to the pier of Puerto Ayora at night you’ll see loads of sharks just swimming around in the lights of the dock. You may also see Golden Rays.

Sea Turtles – Man, these guys are EVERYWHERE. After five days of snorkelling we became a bit blasé about them (aw, not really, they’re still amazing). We saw them from the pier of Puerto Ayora and almost every time we went snorkelling.

Sea Lions – These super lazy super cute guys are all over the port as well – sitting on benches, chilling on boats. You know.

Sally Light Foot Crabs – Also – EVERYWHERE around the port, on the cliffs. You will struggle to not see these things.

BIRDS – without too much difficult you are definitely going to see pelicans, frigate birds, finches (don’t ask me specifics!!), and yellow warblers. Also, a huge amount of sea birds and herons. I was a little surprised that the blue footed boobies weren’t more prolific – but again, with a little bit of effort you will definitely see one!

But, these are some of the ‘extras’ our cruise got us:

Land Iguanas (Santiago, Sullivan Place or Urbina Bay, Isabela): Again, if you go to either of these places you WILL see a land iguana.

Nascar and Red Footed Boobies: On the island of Genovesa you can walk amongst them and they are so relaxed. There is NO chance of not seeing them. You could also maybe see a Galapagos Owl here (but we weren’t too lucky!).

Massive Marine Iguanas: Impossible not to see, as this photo points out. This was at Espinoza Point on Fernandina.

White Tipped Sharks: We saw these at Moreno Point on Isabela just in the rock pools and on about 3 different occasions snorkelling around Isabela and Fernandina.

Galapagos Penguins: These guys were AMAZING and the Galapagos is the only place in the world you can go snorkelling with penguins. This was one of my must sees – they are only viewable around Isabela (as far as I could work out!)

Flightless Cormorants: These guys look so pathetic out of the water….and then boom, you see them dive and it’s like WOW. Again, we only saw these on Fernandina and snorkelling in that area.

Things that I feel we were lucky to see (and again, would only have seen on the cruise):

Jumping Manta Rays: we saw a LOT of jumping manta rays from the boat between Santiago and Santa Cruz. There were so many that it would be difficult not to see them, but it is also quite a luck based thing.

Dolphins: we saw a pod of dolphins passing by between Isabela and Fernandina in the evening. This was also pretty awesome, but easy to miss (some people were taking a shower and didn’t see them!).

Short Fin Whales: These were quite far away and to be honest I did maybe expect to see more on the whale front. The tour before us had seen Orcas and a BLUE WHALE!!!!!!

Galapagos Snake: You know this video? The one with the snakes killing the iguanas? That was filmed on the Galapagos at Espinoza point on Fernandina. We landed there, but not in snake killing iguana season – but we did get to see a snake.

Galapagos Hawk: These are the apex predator and can often be seen high in the branches. We saw them on maybe three occasions.

An octopus killing a crab: This is probably more a once in a life time experience!!! An octopus flew out of the water and snatched a crab down from a branch it had tried to escape to and ate it.

Flamingoes: There were a few places we might have seen flamingoes and didn’t (Bachas Beach on Santa Cruz) but eventually we found 3 on Moreno Point on Isabela island.

Hammerhead Shark: There are only a few places where you can see and/or swim with hammerhead sharks in the Galapagos. One is deep water snorkelling from Prince Philip’s Steps near Genovesa and only 4 boats go there, the other is on a VERY expensive day trip from Puerto Ayora and you need at least 25 hours diving experience. You may also be able to see them near the islands of Darwin and Wolf. Also, we saw 3 sharks when we were snorkelling, but it was so fleeting you could have missed it. If you were going out of your way you might be disappointed.

The only main things I’ve missed off here that may be a ‘must see’ for someone (I know I had to really think about them) are:

• The Albatross – only viewable between April and December at Punta Suarez on Espinoza (which is only accessible as part of either a southern cruise or as a day trip from San Cristobal).
• The Male Frigate Bird doing its red puffy pouched love dance. (Okay, so I didn’t know this was a thing until we got to the islands. We did actually see it, but from a distance and I didn’t get a photo!).

The scenery

We were pleasantly surprised at how beautiful to the islands were and geologically interesting.

For example – these volcanic formations on Sulivan Bay:

And just generally the remote, gorgeous beaches, blue seas and volcanoes:

The cost

There are lots of blogs on how to do Galapagos on the cheap – and I’m sure, with quite a few compromises, it’s possible. Don’t eat lobster in Puerto Ayora; don’t do a cruise etc etc. Personally, as long as you can afford it, this is a place to not worry too much about the money. Easy to say, less easy to do.

I’m not going to put the price of our cruise here – if you desperately want to know, send me a message. 2 weeks before we were going to go it was advertised at $3000 per person. We got it cheaper than that.

But, generally, this is a place where you are just haemorrhaging money before you even get out of the airport ($400 return flights, $100 entrance fee, $20 transit fee, $11 transfer costs). The accommodation is around $30 a night for something very basic, and the food options are pretty pricey for Ecuadorian standards ($25 for two people for lobster). You’ll also probably want to buy a tshirt.