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Hi all,
I’ve been meaning to come here to write my trip report for absolutely ages, but completely failed to for reasons which I’ll probably elaborate on at some point (I’m fine, this term at school has been somewhat traumatic is the short version).
The Galapagos islands were absolutely amazing, and I highly recommend them!
First of all I’ll deal with getting there and away – I flew into Quito with Iberia for really an astonishingly low number of Avios (105,000) and only £240 in taxes and fees (plus extra for the positioning flights to Madrid obvs), and got very lucky, as I got Iberia’s new business class suite in both directions.
I had one night in a little independent hotel near the airport (I had a balcony with a hammock and a view, and an unheated swimming pool for less than £50, so I was delighted), then flew on to Baltra with Latam. I booked my flights using a Covid voucher from Nusatrip (I had a cancelled trip to Indonesia, and really the only option for booking internal flights is through OTA, unless you want to book last minute when you get there), but your options are LATAM and Avianca (regardless of whether you’re flying to San Cristobal or Baltra), so Star Alliance miles of some description, or any of LATAM’s partners will help you get there.
I planned 9 nights on the Galapagos Islands, and had hoped to book a cruise on arrival, in order to get a bargain. The plan was that I booked my first two night’s accommodation on Baltra, and my last night. I was assured by many people that it’s easy to book accommodation when you arrive, in case you don’t find space on a last-minute cruise. I booked cheap accommodation, in case I ended up leaving on a cruise almost immediately – I wouldn’t feel like I’d wasted too much money on a hotel room that I didn’t use.
I spent an awful lot of time in the months leading up to my trip researching the different boats departing and returning within my 9 night window along with their planned routes. I also worked out which were the spots I was most interested in visiting, and had the boats all ranked in a very detailed, and heavily annotated and highlighted Word document. I got in contact with a Quito based travel agent about 1 week out, and started looking into which boats still had berths – this is when I got a shock and discovered that my two top choices (heading West to Isabela and Fernandina) were now fully booked, and there were only 4 boats left that had availability for cruises within my window. The agent told me that 3 of those boats were down to their last room due to it being Easter, so I checked with another agency, discovered that exactly the same 4 boats only had availability, blinked first and decided to book something that was several hundred pounds more than I had hoped to pay (but several hundred pounds less than full price). I later discovered that there was more than 1 berth available on the Aida Maria for the duration of my trip, that one couple had booked a last-minute berth with and agency in Puerta Ayora the day before we set sail (thankfully nobody felt the need to bring up how much we all paid, as I think I’d have felt ill if they had!), but I’m not sure whether that was due to cancellation or not. I do wish I hadn’t blinked first, but hey ho, hindsight is rather frustrating like that. I will say that, if you want to go to Isabela and Fernandina in peak season – they are likely to sell out. Elsewhere and outside of peak season you stand a better shot of booking when you get there. Also, if booking with a Quito based agency, or one in the Galapagos Islands themselves, make sure you have a few hours in the office location during standard business hours, so that you can pop by and pay in cash. You’ll get stuck with an absurd card processing fee (around 5%, which adds up).
So in the end, I had 4 nights in Puerto Ayora before my cruise, followed by 5 nights on the boat. I had planned to do a few day trips, and perhaps an overnight to Puerto Villamil to snorkel Las Tintoreras and Los Tuneles, but the prices of day trips had doubled since all of the blogs I read about land-based trips had been written, and I just couldn’t justify spending £200 on a day trip, so I wasn’t too remorseful about booking at a week out in the end. If I had stayed land based, I would have seen substantially less, and paid about the same.
In the end, I spent most days lazing on Tortuga bay, which was a lovely stretch of sand. There were lots of marine iguanas, pelicans and baby sharks (do-do-do-doo-doo-do-do) to see and snorkel with, and the occasional turtle. I came to the conclusion that Las Ninfas was overrated (but perhaps I just didn’t get lucky with when I went), but Las Grietas was amazing, and I would have liked to have had longer there than I did (I had to leave early in order to check out and get to my cruise). The Darwin Centre, El Chato and El Mirador were both worth a visit too, but check whether they’re included in your cruise itinerary before going during free days.
More to come, I just need to go and lie in a cold bath for a few minutes, for my own sanity.
Right – the cruise.
I booked the Aida Maria, which is rated as Budget Class, but really it was lovely. I got lucky and managed to get a cabin to myself for the whole time, despite not paying a single supplement to guarantee this. The food was fantastic and plentiful, but the booze was wildly overpriced. I smuggled a bottle of rum on board, as is traditional in the Americas.
Don’t judge me.
My itinerary was less than ideal, as we kept going back to population centres (Baltra and San Cristobal) to let some passengers off and others on, so it didn’t maximise time spent in the most beautiful, wild places further afield (which I recommend you consider when choosing itineraries). We went to Floreana (Post Office Bay, Cormorant Point and Devil’s Crown), Espanola (Suarez Point, Gardner Bay) San Cristobal (Lobos Islet and the interpretation centre), Santa Fe, South Plaza and Santa Cruz (El Chato, El Mirador do los Tuneles and the Darwin station). Note that many boats visit Floreana and miss out Devil’s Crown, I assume because they limit the number of people who snorkel there to preserve this absolutely incredible underwater world. Just to be clear – Devil’s Crown is absolutely the highlight of this itinerary – it absolutely blows all of the other snorkelling we did out of the water. Choose your cruise carefully, if heading to the South Islands.
I won’t list the wildlife I saw, because it’s disappointing if you visit the same place and don’t see the same things, suffice to say it was absolutely amazing.
General advice for the cruise:
– Bring your own snorkelling gear, if possible, as the standard of equipment is variable, and many boats will charge you extra to hire snorkelling equipment. You will be doing a lot of snorkelling.
– Use reef-safe sunscreen, ideally Protect Land & Sea certified stuff (https://haereticus-lab.org/protect-land-sea-certification-3/), as it’s reprehensible to not minimise the destructive impact you have on these natural environments you’re there to enjoy. Obviously apply a while before getting in the water, so that it sinks in, rather than washing off.
– Put lots and lots of insect repellant on before visiting Suarez Point especially. I also highly recommend you apply it under clothes (I just put it on exposed skin, so the little f@ckers bit me to death through the material of my T-shirt and shorts I had over a hundred bites, and it really, emphatically wasn’t pleasant)
– Bring a variety of shoes, including water shoes / Tevas for wet-landings, and something with ankle protection to hike in. The terrain can be pretty rough.I’ll write a bit about the trip I did on the mainland (to a birdwatching area called Mindo) later on.
I’m happy to answer questions, if anyone has them.
Oh, also, some of the crossings between islands get really very rough, and you will almost certainly be doing the crossings at night. I highly recommend you get the drowsy-making seasickness tablets, that way you’re more likely to sleep through it! We had people vomiting on board who had never been seasick before this trip.
Bring earplugs, because unless you’re on an uber-luxury boat, you’re likely to be in pretty close quarters with other passengers, not all of whom will be considerate first thing.
Ask for a deck cabin in advance, if you can (although the movement of the boat can be greater up top, and you might get charged more).
Bring a wide-brimmed sunhat (unleash your inner Brigitte Bardot) and a rash vest for snorkelling. The sun is fierce – the country is called Ecuador for a reason.
Bring a decent camera (and know how to use it before you go). No, your phone will not be the same.
Thanks Cat, must have been amazing indeed to offset all the discomfort you describe 🙂 Have you posted your photos someplace (they’re always fab)? I always questioned if it would be worth the money but it sounds like a good adventure to get value out of miles and vouchers from the way you put it together. I’ll give it some thought, I so much want to see more of South Anerica but feel spoiled for choice.
Enjoying the trip report. Great ideas. We had to cancel our Peru and Galapagos trip due to Covid. Our itinerary , which I think was pretty comprehensive is still waiting to be revived. One day!
Sounds like a real adventure Cat! I can’t wait to do Galapagos. It’s on top of the list.
This sounds fabulous, @Cat, you’re brilliant at finding these itineraries in the school holidays! I sympathise re the bites – I got eaten alive through my T-shirt in the Everglades in January!
Great stuff Cat – thank you
Thanks Cat, must have been amazing indeed to offset all the discomfort you describe 🙂 Have you posted your photos someplace (they’re always fab)? I always questioned if it would be worth the money but it sounds like a good adventure to get value out of miles and vouchers from the way you put it together. I’ll give it some thought, I so much want to see more of South Anerica but feel spoiled for choice.
The photos are being edited slowly and are appearing online one at a time – I’ve posted about 40 so far, and will post a link here when I’ve got them all done and up on Flickr. I’ve only just recently finished the Costa Rica ones from last summer though, so don’t hold your breath!
I agree – there’s so much to see and do in S & C America, it’s hard to know where to start! I’m very excited about Colombia in a few weeks, and still can’t quite believe my luck that I can now use my companion voucher for Iberia. I do wish BA would increase the flights East though – I miss my SE Asia trips!
Enjoying the trip report. Great ideas. We had to cancel our Peru and Galapagos trip due to Covid. Our itinerary , which I think was pretty comprehensive is still waiting to be revived. One day!
Get re-booking Jill, it’s an amazing area of the world!
Sounds like a real adventure Cat! I can’t wait to do Galapagos. It’s on top of the list.
Do it, do it, do it @meta, you’ll love it!
This sounds fabulous, @Cat, you’re brilliant at finding these itineraries in the school holidays! I sympathise re the bites – I got eaten alive through my T-shirt in the Everglades in January!
I’m always the person who goes on holiday with other people who say “Nobody else gets bitten when I’m around”, and then they’re astonished when they don’t get bitten at all. I’ve never experienced mosquitoes swarming round me like they were in the Galapagos though. They were as bad as the sandflies in Dusky Sound in NZ.
Whereabouts do you recommend in the Everglades, BTW @NorthernLass?
You’re welcome @AndyGWP!
@Cat – you mentioned prices of cruises had shot up, but how did you find the general day to day prices were for your trip (expectations v. reality?)
Conscious Galapagos is a remote place (not the same admittedly, but I did Hawaii in 2016 and recall that unsurprisingly prices were considerably higher versus mainland) so wondered how that gap was being maintained between Ecuador / Galapagos etc?
(I’ve never been to South America – its on my to do list ‘one day’ though so treat me as an idiot!) 🙂
Just a quick note or two about Quito and Mindo – I had one night at the Vista Del Angel Boutique Hotel, which was lovely. I had a corner room with wonderful views across the Old Town, and was slap bang in the middle of things, but never underestimate just how much 2850m in altitude is likely to hit you, especially if you normally live at an altitude of 11m in London (well, my 7th floor flat is probably more like 40m, but you get the idea). Vista Del Angel is at the top of a rather steep hill which really didn’t look like that long a climb, but good grief it took me a long time, as I had to stop every two steps to gasp a few breaths. Also – bring layers for Quito – it’s quite cold.
It is a lovely city to wander round, but I opted to leave my big DSLR camera in the hotel room as I often do when I’m travelling solo in a big city in S America.
I took a taxi from there to Mindo, then got a pickup up a dirt track to Bellavista Cloud Forest Reserve & Lodge, chosen largely because it was the only widely reputed birding lodge (in one of the best birding areas of the world) that was bookable on Hotels.com. It was absolutely wonderful. My booking included 3 (marvellous, hearty) meals a day, but wonderful guided hikes around the property were extra (3 guided hikes a day for $10, if memory serves). My room was absolutely wonderful, with a seating area in front of floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the gorgeous cloud forest, and a heater and lots of blankets for when it got a bit chilly (it really did). The only problem was with the total lack of soundproofing between different rooms in the same building, some of whose residents were leaving at 4am for off-site birding, so I didn’t sleep terribly well while I was there!
In terms of wildlife, it was absolutely spectacular. Again, I’m wary of listing wildlife, as I don’t want others to go and not see everything I saw and be disappointed! Suffice to say that the birdlife was amazing. They do have hummingbird feeders and bananas are left out for the wildlife, which always makes me slightly uneasy in terms of the ethics of feeding wild animals, but they do wash the hummingbird feeders between uses at least. TBH, I think you’d struggle to find many birding lodges in Mindo that don’t feed the birds, and if that is a deal-breaker for you, I would look elsewhere.
From the Lodge I booked a jeep to take me back to Mindo, where I was planning to catch a bus to Quito, and from there to the airport, but the nice jeep driver and I had so much fun attempting to communicate with our equally pathetic grasp of each others’ language (I’m just about proficient enough in Spanish to manage “Muchos colibries. Bello colibries. Amo colibries”) that he offered to drive me all the way to the airport for a very reasonable price which was really not that much more than I’d have spent on buses, and he stopped twice at hummingbird hotspots at lower elevations (so I saw lots of new stunningly beautiful birds, which I was delighted by, obviously). When I said that I would need to pop by an ATM on the way, he asked if I had seen La Mitad del Mundo yet, then took me to an ATM right by the monument so that I could snap a few photos there too. He actually drove well too. Honestly, if you find yourself going anywhere near the Mindo / Nanegalito area, I highly recommend you arrange for Carlos to drive you around – his number is +593 93 954 8078. I hope nobody minds me giving him a little plug!
Let me know if you have any questions.
@Cat – you mentioned prices of cruises had shot up, but how did you find the general day to day prices were for your trip (expectations v. reality?)
Conscious Galapagos is a remote place (not the same admittedly, but I did Hawaii in 2016 and recall that unsurprisingly prices were considerably higher versus mainland) so wondered how that gap was being maintained between Ecuador / Galapagos etc?
(I’ve never been to South America – its on my to do list ‘one day’ though so treat me as an idiot!) 🙂
Accommodation was pretty cheap on both the islands and the mainland. Food was more expensive than I expected on the islands ($15-20 dollars for a main, roughly) and the range was a bit limited in supermarkets – that wasn’t so much the case on the mainland. I was deeply saddened by the total absence of ginger beer in any supermarket I visited, either on the islands or the mainland.
Was there anything specifically you wanted to know @AndyGWP?
Oh, another bit of Galapagos advice – give the sea lions a wide berth, when possible (often you’ll find that the wildlife is splayed right across the path you have to walk on, so staying 2m away, like you’re told, is not really possible). There was a sea lion lounging on the jetty that we had to cross to get into the water to snorkel. Some local kids were antagonising it, so when I walked past, just a little bit too close, it bit my ankle and broke the skin. Luckily this was in San Cristobal, so I was able to go to the medical centre and be reassured that no Galapagos sea lion had ever had rabies, to their knowledge!
Obviously this is something that could only have happened to me!
@Cat yes, never underestimate the altitude in some South America cities. La Paz, Cusco, Bogota… Had similar issues in La Paz in what seemed like a short climb of 3-5 minutes tops turned into good 20 minutes as had to stop all the time. I do have altitude sickness tablets, but I find one liter of coca tea per day is much better.
Do you happen to know if it is widely available in Equador?
I was planning on getting rabies vaccine now that I am travelling more to off-beat places, but apparently there is a global shortage.
Looking forward to the photos @Cat, no rush. Enjky Colombia, with so many weeks I’m sure you’ll get to know the country well. Your story regarding wildlife abd footpaths took me back to my uni days when a very bad tempered swan figured s/he owned it, everybody learned quickly to give it a wide berth 🙂
@Cat yes, never underestimate the altitude in some South America cities. La Paz, Cusco, Bogota… Had similar issues in La Paz in what seemed like a short climb of 3-5 minutes tops turned into good 20 minutes as had to stop all the time. I do have altitude sickness tablets, but I find one liter of coca tea per day is much better.
Do you happen to know if it is widely available in Equador?
I was planning on getting rabies vaccine now that I am travelling more to off-beat places, but apparently there is a global shortage.
Ooh, I somehow missed that little gem of advice for coping at altitudes @meta. I’ll keep an eye out for it in Colombia. I didn’t see it in Ecuador, but then I didn’t know to look. It is apparently available.
I did intend on getting the booster, as it’s been over 10 years since I got my rabies vaccines, but I’ll wait until there’s a ready supply of it. I’ll try to avoid sea lions and other bitey mammals (not to mention bad-tempered swans @BJ – aren’t all swans bad-tempered?) in the meantime!
@Cat – I’ve always attracted biting insects, but I’m sure it’s got worse since I hit middle age. I found a brand of repellent called Cutter’s in Wahlgreen’s in the US which is very effective, reasonably priced and smells nice.
We did one day driving through the south Everglades on our road trip from Key West to Orlando, from the southern entrance to Flamingo and back again. There was quite a bit of wildlife, turkey buzzards and other raptors, Ospreys and a huge alligator at the side of the road! There’s the old Nike nuclear missile (complete with disarmed missile and other cold war memorabilia) where an army vet turned park ranger does a very interesting tour.
Vitamin B supplement is quite effective at keeping midges away.It may work with mosquitos too
Apparently they go wild for group O blood and oestrogen – certainly it takes a full chemical arsenal to keep them off me while they seem uninterested in my (group A) husband and son!
I don’t think this is scientifically proven. My Dad (group 0) never gets bitten, but my partner also group 0 gets bitten every time. My Mum (group A) also gets bitten all the time and as for myself (also group A), it depends on who else is present.
https://www.healthline.com/health/mosquito-blood-type#research
There’s quite a bit of evidence for blood groups, but there are other factors involved. I’ve also wondered if being Rh -ve is an additional attraction but I haven’t seen any studies on this. Partner is A +ve and never gets bitten, son is A -ve and occasionally gets bitten, I am O -ve and the mosquitos are waiting at the airport whenever I get off a plane!
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