How to “do” the Galapagos
Visiting the Galapagos need not cost the earth
When we first thought about visiting the Galapagos, I phoned a trusted travel agent. “I know visiting the Galapagos is expensive, but trying to keep costs down, can you please give me an idea of how much?”. “Not counting the flights there, you’ll be looking at around $1,000 per person a day for a budget option”, came the reply. Down went the phone, and I told a disappointed Jackie that we’d have to think of somewhere else to go.
All that changed when Henry, our son, said “…but my mate Corwyn spent a fortnight there, and he was a broke student!” So, we called Corwyn, who was a mine of information and help, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The quote I was given by the travel agent was correct, but it was to visit by taking a Galapagos cruise. Now, if you’re a diving enthusiast, it’s only on cruises that you can reach the more remote dive and snorkelling spots. Distances can be large and not all the sights are reachable in a day from the settlements. And if you are desperate to tick off seeing as many species as possible, then the cruises are probably the only way to do it.
However, there IS another way. And that’s to visit by staying on land. Not being as broke as Corwyn, we splashed out by staying in nice mid-price hotels, eating in nice restaurants and taking a lot of hiking and snorkelling trips, which don’t come cheap. In total not including flights there, it cost us just over $200 per person a day – not $1,000! It was still expensive, but well worth it for being able to experience an absolutely unique part of the world. (And Corwyn didn’t spend anywhere near that much.)
There are three (main) inhabited islands, all of which are well worth visiting: Santa Cruz, which is the most developed for tourism and the starting base for most cruises, San Cristobal, which is the administrative capital, and Isabela, the least developed. We stayed 4/5 nights on each, and that didn’t give us enough time to cover all the activities available
Furthermore, we loved experiencing the island life, chilling out and getting to know the locals a bit. This is incredibly easy, as you are accompanied by at least one of them every time you venture out of town into the National Park, which is pretty much everywhere outside town.
Two of the islands have airports with regular flights from Guyaquil and Quito on the mainland: Santa Cruz (GPS – Galapagos) and San Cristobal (SCY). So it makes sense to do an open jaw return. In between the islands, there are fast 30-seater speedboats, which are great fun (although they can apparently be uncomfortable in rough seas)
However, these boats all go to and from Santa Cruz, so when we found out we’d lose a whole day travelling to Isabela from San Cristobal because of lousily-timed boat connections, we decided to go by air. Flying in the 10-seater plane was a wonderful experience we would recommend to anyone not nervous about flying.
We booked our hotels through the usual online sites (trivago/booking/hotels.com etc) and fixed all the inter-island travel and trips when we got there. However, a word of warning: we were there in mid/high season (Easter) and a couple of hotels were full when we pre-booked two months before, and once there we found one or two tours and inter-island boats fully booked too. If you have less than 3 days’ lead time on each island, we’d advise to try and book key things like inter-island transport in advance of your trip via a Galapagos travel agency.
Finally, and most importantly, we HIGHLY recommend arming yourself with the Collins Traveller’s Guide: Wildlife of the Galapagos (Fitter, Fitter & Hosking). It was our bible during our stay. It lists all the sites that can be visited and has pictures and information about all the flora, fauna and wildlife of the islands. It’s THE compendium to explain the extraordinary place that is the Galapagos.
