How we visited the Galapagos

I wanted to write a short post about how we went about enjoying the Galapagos Islands. Simply put, at this time of year there seemed to be plenty of last minute deals available, so we DIDN’T book ahead of time. Urvi booked our flight tickets to the Islands from Quito (Tame, Aerogal are the main airlines to get out to the Galapagos). We flew to Baltra Airport, which is on Santa Cruz Island. Santa Cruz was the base point for most cruises, or at least the half way stopping point for the 8 day cruises. This means that it was easy to get last minute deals of boats leaving from the island.

The first thing to decide is whether you want to do a cruise at all!! I mean that you could do a land based tour, from Santa Cruz, combined with day trips to a few islands (not all are accessible on day trips) and an overnight to Isabella. We decided to do a cruise, because it would enable us to get to islands early, see them late in the day and also not have to ‘commute’ all the time.

The islands are broadly split up into a North, South and Western cluster, and the second thing we had to decide was how long we wanted to cruise for. The options were essentially 4, 5 or 8 days. With the 4 or 5 days you would not be able to all 3 of the clusters and essentially you would need to decide one of the clusters. The 8 day cruises would enable you to pretty much get to all the islands. We chose a 4 day cruise, simply because of budget and time availability. This worked for us.

The third thing to decide is the area you wanted to cruise, so of course if on 8 days, then you can get everywhere, but if on a shorter tour then you would need to decide. We opted for the north sector tour. This would enable us to get Genovese, which is a distant island that is rarely reached and that we wanted to get to. In hindsight we might have wanted to do the south sector, and this would have included Espanola. Espanola is absolutely one of the big hitters of the Galapagos. The bird life is outstanding and the island is jut beautiful.

Once these ponderables were resolved, the final thing to decide was the boat to go on. We were not too bothered about getting on a boat akin to the QM2, but we did want to be safe and have a good guide. It is tough tough tough to find out about the boats at the time of booking. The boats are in generally 4 broad categories - Tourist, Superior, First Class and Executive. Let’s ignore the last one because these boats are well above the budget of most backpackers. We went for the Eden which was a first class boat, but to be honest, the route, the duration and then the guide were more important to us. The boat was awesome though, so we lucked out in any case!!

The Galapagos Islands are not tough to visit, the budget traveller will still need to budget $150 per person per day for a cruise (excluding park entry fee, and flights), but deals are to be had. More important to this is the fact that visiting the Galapagos is truly an amazing experience and for most most is once in a lifetime, spend the money and enjoy it!

The Galapagos Islands, where the animals are wild and the skies filled with birds

When you think of nature and the best places in the world to witness the awe of nature there are many locations that come to mind. It could be a safari in Africa or rain forests of Borneo, or the Great Barrier Reef. However there is no place better than the Galapagos Islands for witnessing nature at its most untouched. For believers of evolution (the theory that all organisms have developed from common ancestors, over millions of years, through a process called natural selection – where natures best survive and pass on successful traits to their offspring) the Galapagos Islands are where the English biologist Charles Darwin came and studied birds called finches, and developed his theories of evolution. It’s a pretty special place!




The islands are about 600 miles west of Ecuador and are famous for the variety of marine, land and bird life, not to mention the many many species of plants. The isolated nature of each island meant that they have developed totally unique populations of plants and in some cases animals, and despite the potential for rampant exploitation over the years many of the islands in the archipelago are untouched and uninhabited.



The basic approach to visiting the Galapagos is to arrive and jump on one of the many expedition cruises for a few days or week of amazing wildlife watching. I don’t want talk too much about that in this post because I want to address this in a separate more detailed post about how we organised our trip. However it is enough to say that we combined an island hopping cruise with some time on the main inhabited island, and some dives also.



The highlights of our trip were the animals and more notably the birds. Because the Galapagos Islands were untouched for so long, the wildlife is totally unaffected by humans, and the birds (many of whom nest on the ground) are literally all around you. The stars of the show were undoubtedly the Frigate Birds. I remember first seeing these amazing birds on the living planet documentaries with David Attenborough, which my dad recorded from the BBC in the mid 1980s. They are amazing birds that look very regal with a long pointed beak and swooping wings. However their most striking features are the huge inflatable red pouches on the chest of the males, that they inflate like a balloon when trying to attract females. The spectacle was amazing on the TV but in real life it is so awesome! Its crazy, when the living planet was on I don’t think that I would have ever dreamt of being 2 feet away from performing Frigate Birds on one of the Galapagos Islands! Now they were everywhere…



Even more amazing than the performance of the males however was the display of synchronised flying that we were treated to by 7-10 birds for about 1hr! Our guide told us that it is pretty common to see these birds following a boat and ‘riding’ on the wind currents it creates, but we had these birds fly literally 1 metre above our sun deck on the top of the boat. They were so so majestic and silent, and in perfect tune with the ship and us it seemed!! The birds would take it in turns to ride directly above us, in order to get the best drafts, and then they would fall back and let a few of the others take the prime location. They were so close that at times I could literally look into their eyes. I don’t know why but the hour that these birds spent with our boat as we travelled between two islands was totally dream like and the most amazing interaction I have ever had with any living animal. It was totally sublime.



Another once in a lifetime experience of nature we had was also a tale of the amazing and also tough side of life on the wild side. We had just finished an afternoons snorkelling (which in its self was amazing! Loads of fish and beautiful corals etc) off Bartolome Island, and as we were drying off and chilling out on the beach someone shouted out turtles!! There was some confusion for a moment as everyone looked out to the water and saw nothing, then we realised the turtles were hundreds of baby turtles that had just hatched up on the beach and were now going to make the dash for the water and potential safety. It was just a totally amazing sight of the babies, not more than 4cm long looking so cute flip flopping there way to the water. There were literally hundreds and the amazing thing was that normally the turtle hatch under the cover of night thus reducing the risk of predators catching them. Unfortunately for the turtles but fortunately for us, these guys woke up during the day. It was also very fortunate for the Frigate Birds who could spot the tiny babes from their cruising altitude a few hundred feet up in the air. The moment the hatchlings were out on the beach the sky was full of hungry birds, and they really tucked in. There was literally a turtle massacre right in front of us. It was just an awesome sight of the birds feasting on the newborns. It was tough to watch but a great display of nature at its wildest. Not more than 2 or 3% of the hatched turtles made it to the water and even then they weren’t safe, there would be fish, sharks and others all ready to welcome them. Maybe only 1% of all the turtles that hatched would survive. What a story! It made every fully grown turtle we saw a total miracle.



The final amazing experience that I wanted to talk about was the diving of North Seymour. In short it was just outstanding! We saw sharks, multiple types of fish, beautiful forms of coral and much more. Urvi wasn’t going to dive here, but I am glad that she decided to do so. She was really lucky and actually saw Hammerhead sharks on her first dive! So that’s pretty amazing. The Galapagos Islands are really special for diving because of the currents that flow around the islands, this make the area full of nutrients and therefore the seas full of animal life. The sharks were really special and on the second dive, although we really struggled with the currents (that were super strong), we saw plenty of black tipped and white tipped reef sharks. The fully grown sharks looked menacing, and it was so exciting for us to see these animals in the wild. Hurrah!!!



We travelled to the Galapagos, like most people, with a vision of natural history paradise, and in short we got exactly that. It was an amazing experience being this close to a range of wildlife. Again it was a privilege to be here in person and for me was another one of these childhood dreams accomplished.