When making our initial plans for South America, we very nearly didn’t bother with the Galapagos Islands, an archipelago of volcanic islands located in the Pacific Ocean about 500 miles off the coast of Ecuador.
These islands are famous for its unique animals, who have had a chance to evolve in isolation. These unique animals allowed Charles Darwin to come up with his theory of evolution, based on natural selection.
So – why weren’t we going to go? Well, I had read that it was super expensive, and also initially thought the only way to see the Galapagos was on a cruise ship, and the water is said to be pretty rough at the time of year we planned to go (August). But, I did additional research and found that we could do a land-based trip, basing ourselves on one island, which did a few things:
- lowered the price
- let us stay primarily on land and avoid a week of sea-sickness
- kept our tourism dollars in the local economy (many of the cruise ships are owned by companies outside the islands, and their profits don’t help the local Galapagos economy)
After scoring some decently priced flights to the biggest (population-wise) island, we were all set! We prepped the boys by reading a few books on the islands (we love this series and use it for lots of our travels), buying them a few very small toys of the animals we would likely see, and getting a cool, laminated pocket guide to the animals on the island.
Our plan was to stay on the island of Santa Cruz, which has a big (Galapagos-wise) town of Puerto Ayora, where we could stay and base ourselves for the four full days we were there.
Since we were already in Ecuador, we had an easy flight from Quito. I had read that all flights stop through Guayaquil, another Ecuadorian city, on the way to the islands, but we got lucky and they must have started direct flights from Quito. So we had a quick two hour flight on Avianca, including free checked bags (!), snacks and in-seat TVs (you can tell we have been flying a lot of budget airlines lately when that is all it takes to wow us!).
We arrived at Baltra Island, a tiny island just north of Santa Cruz, whose only noteworthy feature seems to be the airport.
We had special checks in Quito to make sure we weren’t bringing any fruit, nuts or meats from the mainland that may affect the islands’ ecosystems. However, when we got to Baltra, our bags had yet another check, where a K9 officer (and his handler) sniffed through all the bags to check for any forbidden items. It was really cool to see him at work.
Once he finished his search, we were allowed to get our bags, and our whole flight was shuttled onto a few buses. There is just one runway, so only one flight arrives at a time. The bus was $5 per person (kids were $2.50) to take a short ride down to a port at the south end of the island. From the port, our entire bus and all of our luggage were shuttled onto a small passenger ferry for a very short (maybe 500m?) ride across to a channel of water to the island of Santa Cruz. The ferry was $1 per person.
From there, we had a choice of taking a bus or a taxi to the main town where our hotel was located, Puerto Ayora. It was a fairly long ride from the very north to the very south tip of the island, just over 40km in total.
We arrived at our hotel, which was highly rated on booking.com, but actually was just okay. Not sure if the high ratings were just compared to other places on the island, but I wasn’t impressed. C didn’t think it was so bad though. However, the location of the hotel was pretty good, just a block or two from the main street running along the south coast of the island.
Once we dropped off our bags, we went to book ourselves on a day tour to one of the nearby islands.
With the tour arranged, we headed to dinner on a street just a block from our hotel. Restaurants lined the entire block and for dinner time, they closed the streets and moved tables out for diners to eat on. It was a fun place to eat, and we enjoyed the food, especially C who got the local favorite, the Brujo, or scorpion fish.
Every restaurant had at least 5-10 of these fresh fish in front of their establishment (along with live lobsters) waiting for the diners to pick their fish. We ended up eating her a few times during our stay, though the meals weren’t really all that fantastic.
The next morning, we woke up and headed to the local grocery store to get some breakfast. On the way, we got a little distracted. Across from the grocery store was a pier, and on the pier, we spotted a sea lion just chilling out. We crept closer to see him (the animals here are not nervous of humans, so he wasn’t bothered), and while watching him, we also spotted some crabs, marine iguanas and a few pelicans.
During our days on Santa Cruz, we were busy with lots of activities and excursions, but for at least a little while every day we would walk through Puerto Ayora and along the water, and get fun sightings of wildlife.
The highlight of our adventures in the Galapagos were really focused around the amazing wildlife, and as such, I am preparing blog posts of our days there, arranged by the starring animal for that day. The posts include:
- The Day of the Tortoises
- The Day of the Birds (and Sea Lions!)
- The Day of the Marine Iguanas at Tortuga Bay
- The Day of the Fishes (and Nas Daily!)
I hope you will follow along with us on our Galapagos adventures!
