Todo Tranquilo in the Galapagos
Last year, our friend Amy bought a beautiful flat in Atlanta. The woman she bought it from was on her way to spend two weeks in the Galapagos after the sale. Still deep in 80-hour work weeks, we all rolled our eyes at this indulgent behavior as the sort of thing only rich, profligate people do.
We are here to tell you, as people who aren’t rich and watch our pennies, that while a trip to the Galapagos is undeniably expensive, it is not out of the range of normal people. We first heard of this tantalizing possibility from a chance conversation with a woman in Puno, Peru, who told us that she saved a large chunk on her cruise by booking it a few days out from Quito. After doing a little independent research, we decided to skip northern Peru and fly directly to Quito in late November (to avoid the high season around Christmas) and look for such a deal for ourselves.
It worked! Here is the key to saving at least half off the price of a cruise in the Galapagos: Book at the last minute. We booked a 7-night cruise on a luxe ship from an agency in Quito three days before the boat left port and we saved nearly 60% off the rack rate (including airfare). Here’s what you need to know to snag a last minute deal:
Do your research
There are dozens of boats plying the Galapagos waters. To make the most of your search on the ground in Quito, it helps to do some research ahead of time to figure out what kind of cruise you want (How many days? How luxurious?), and set your sights on a couple of boats. Look up when those boats are leaving, what’s included, the listed price, and if the boat has any deals on last minute Galapagos websites (you should be able to do better than the prices you find on these sites). That way you know what you want and how much you want to pay before you hit the ground in Quito.
Do your legwork
Most of the travel agencies and Galapagos cruise offices are within walking distance of each other in the La Mariscal district of Quito. Since you’ve done your research, you can simply walk around to the agencies offering the cruises you like and see what they have available. (Side note: I understand that you may also be able to arrange a last minute cruise from Guayaquil or in the Galapagos themselves, but I think most of the offices that own the boats are in Quito.) Keep your eyes peeled — we bought our cruise from an agency that offered a better deal than the company that owned the boat!
Outside of high season, you’ll get a spot!
When we did our search in late November, we had our pick of boats — not a single one on our “wish list” was full. We understand that high season in the Galapagos lasts from June to September, with another brief high season in mid-December to mid-January.
Increase your ATM withdrawal limit for a few days.
Most of the agencies we talked to instituted a 7-10% fee if you paid for your cruise with a credit card. Since we’re talking about thousands of dollars here, that is steep, too steep. Instead, we called our bank and raised our ATM withdrawal fee for a few days and paid in cash. Carrying around that much money was scary, but also slightly awesome.
If you want to read more, here’s an excellent post by Bee and Nick, charming Brits we made friends with on our cruise and then spent a week beach bumming with on Isla Isabella. Seriously, they’ve covered everything we could hope to say, and give some good money-saving tips.
A quick primer on how to kill time in Quito before your cruise.
In our opinion, Quito sucks. The La Mariscal area is seedy and feels dangerous at night. The Old Quarter is pretty, but how many churches can you really see? We found a few good ways to spend the days before our cruise:
1. Mingle with dapper gentlemen.
Every town in Ecuador has these genteel, nattily dressed older gents who spend their time reading the paper in the square and strolling arm in arm with each other. Head to any town square, and they’ll be there.
2. Eat fish and become a local celebrity.
We found an awesome little stand called Corvina Don Jimmy in Quito’s Mercado Central selling fried sea bass with ceviche and potatoes. So delicious! So good, in fact, a local TV news crew was doing a spot on it, and interviewed these gringos on what we thought about it. We explained how the delicate balance of flavors and textures combined to create a transcendent whole. Just kidding! In our limited Spanish, all we could muster was “Muy delicioso!” and “Excelente!”
3. Visit the equator
You’re in Ecuador, you should go to the “Mitad del Mundo” and stand with each foot in a separate hemisphere!
OK, on to the Galapagos!
Let me start by saying I don’t think the words or pictures you’re going to see in this post do the Galapagos justice. This archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean simply describes description — magical, beautiful, enchanting, (mostly) unspoiled. I’m going to become evangelical in my insistence that everyone should come here once in their lives. Don’t you want to spend your mornings mingling with marine iguanas and giant land tortoises, your afternoons swimming with turtles and sea lions, and your nights watching shooting stars?
The Galapagos are incredible for their history and natural beauty, of course, but you come here for up-close-and-personal interactions with animals. The animals here have never learned to fear humans, and you can get thrillingly close to them. You can count the scales on an iguana, hear a mother sea lion nursing her cub, or swim next to penguins. This wasn’t like our safari at all — there are always loads of wildlife just inches away from you.
Here are some of the animals you’ll find on Galapagos. Click on the photos to see it in slideshow form!
Our Cruise (aka one of the best weeks of our lives)
We spent about a week aboard Treasures of Galapagos, a luxe catamaran, with 14 other passengers. In an amazing bit of luck, most of our fellow passengers were around our age, something the crew said was very unusual. Our room aboard the ship was the biggest and nicest we’ve had in months, the food was delicious and plentiful, and our guide, Alex, was knowledgable and spoke like Ricky Ricardo. (“When you are snorkeleeing, do not stand on the rrrrrrrocks.”).
A Galapagos cruise is like summer camp for grown ups. You have fun activities, make new friends, and others take care of all the planning. There’s even snacks and juice after playtime! Here was a typical day:
7 AM: The bell rings for breakfast. We stuff ourselves on fruit, eggs, toast, juice, etc.
8 AM: We climb into small zodiac boats for our first shore excursion of the day. Disembarking the zodiacs is always an interesting experience, requiring either wading onto a beach or a leap of faith from the boat onto rocky land. Once ashore, we might spend our time hiking in an otherworldly landscape of lava rocks that look as if they were formed yesterday (geologically speaking, they were). Or maybe we’d walk a shoreline filled with hidden crevices and pools that act as a nursery for baby sea lions while their mothers go off to hunt.
10:00 AM: Return to the boat, where our polished and professional steward, Victor, awaits with freshly squeezed tropical juice and snacks.
10:30 AM: Time to snorkel! We don our wetsuits to brave the water that’s been swept up from Antarctica, and take the plunge! You forget the cold when you’re playing with a sea lion, surrounded by giant sea turtles, or watching immense schools of fish, sharks, and giant manta rays swim past while blue footed boobies knife down in search of a snack. This was, by a mile, the best snorkeling we have ever done in our lives. And every day just seemed to get better than the day before. Check out this video of our group playing with a young sea lion, shot by our cruise mate Craig on his GoPro.
And watch out for sharks!
12 PM: Back to the boat in time for a quick shower before eating a hearty lunch. Lunch is usually followed by a couple of hours of free time for sunbathing, reading, or napping on the top deck of the boat, with immense frigate birds flying overhead in the boat’s slipstream.
3 PM: Board the zodiacs for our afternoon trip to shore. Maybe this time we’ll see marine iguanas fighting, blue footed boobies fishing by dive bombing the water en masse, or a hawk feasting on a recent kill, all in startling close-up.
4:30 PM: Return to the boat for round two of snacks and juice, followed by more time to relax.
7 PM: Dinner time and a primer from Alex on what to expect the next day.
9-10 PM: We might spend time after dinner chatting, watching a movie in the common area, or doing some star gazing in the incredible Galapagos sky. Thanks to our busy days and my seasickness meds, I’m usually dead asleep by 10 p.m.
Needless to say, it was an amazing week. We think a cruise is the best way to do the Galapagos — you get out to islands that would be difficult to reach independently, you have a guide to explain what you’re looking at, and all the food/transportation/itinerary hassles are taken care of for you. (A note to any of my lawyer friends still reading: The Galapagos is the ideal vacation because there’s no cell phone signal or WiFi on the boats, so you won’t need to bring your BlackBerry!) We also think you should go for the nicest and longest cruise you can afford. More money gets you a nice boat with hot showers, good food, and an English speaking guide. And if you’re flying all the way out here, it would be disappointing to only have two days on the boat, as some of the cheaper cruises offer.
For Land Lubbers
If you can’t afford a cruise, the alternative is to pick a home base and do day trips. Yes, there really are cities in the Galapagos! I’m not sure what we were thinking, but we had no idea that there were places you could actually stay on land out here. In fact, we loved our time here so much, we changed our flight back to the mainland at the last minute (for free!) and spent several days lazing on the beach in the sleepy, sandy beach town of Puerto Villamil on the island of Isabella. Puerto Villamil is a two hour ride by speedboat (which can be a pretty wild ride when the seas are choppy) from the main town of Puerto Ayora, which is on the island of Santa Cruz. Once you reach here, though, it’s “todo tranquilo” in the words of our guesthouse owner. We stayed at Posada del Caminante and got a nice private room about a 5 minute walk from the beach for just $20 a night. We were happy and surprised to find such affordable accommodation in the Galapagos. As for food, many of the local cafes served cheap ($5-$7) set menus. So while getting here is expensive, staying here for a while isn’t.
We spent our days sampling the local delicacies — namely, coco locos (a fresh coconut spiked with aguardiente, an unaged rum), Los Coqueiros ice cream (a local milk pop with big chunks of fruit), and bolons, a breakfast specialty made of mashed plantains and cheese — hanging out on a beach patrolled by massive marine iguanas and tiny Darwin finches, spending quality time at a salty beach bar with a sundowner in hand and our feet in the sand, continuing our daily sea lion/sea turtle playtime at the Concha de Perla lagoon, and hanging out with Nick and Bee, who are full of funny, fabulous stories and told us about all the new hipster trends in London. Namely: college sports t-shirts, gourmet hamburgers, craft beer, BBQ, and grits!! Can you believe it? In London, we’d actually be hip! (By the way, Aunt Suzy, we invited them over to eat deviled eggs, mac and cheese, and giblet gravy at Thanksgiving one year. We figured you wouldn’t mind.)
Back on Santa Cruz for our last night before we flew back to the mainland, we had our most memorable meal in many months. By the docks where the fisherman sell their daily catch of fish and lobster by day, a group of women fry ’em up by night, along with rice, plantains, and veggies. And to wash it down, Nick and Jordan rounded up all the local Pilsener beer they could carry from the minimart across the street. And of course, we had another Los Coqueiros ice cream bar for dessert.
When we look back on these two weeks, we feel the full weight of our good fortune. Whether you come here on a luxury cruise or do the day trip / beach bumming option, we know you’ll find the Galapagos islands as beautiful, magical, and enchanting as we did.
