Diving - The Galapagos Islands - Trip of a lifetime!
Planning
For a number of years, I had wanted to dive in the Galapagos Islands.
For me, the big draw was scenes of hundreds of Hammerhead Sharks on programmes like Blue Planet, but creatures like the Marine Iguanas were equally interesting.
There are interesting animals on land as well, like the Giant Tortoises, so for a while Mandy and I tried to see if we could combine a trip where she visited islands each day and I did a liveaboard, but it just seemed too difficult to arrange and there aren't many butterflies in the Galapagos, so wasn't Mandy's main focus.
I looked into liveaboards a few times, but never quite got around to it, until I spoke with Andy and he was keen to visit the islands, too.
He quite quickly found us a relatively cheap boat (more on that later) and reasonably priced flights and so we decided that we would go in February 2025.
A week or so later, he was sending me photos from people he knew and suggested we might be better to go in September - I had no particularly strong preference, so we switched the booking to arrive on the liveaboard on 17th September, 2024.
The Galapagos Islands are a protected reserve off the coast of Ecuador (which they are politically part of), so our flight from Heathrow took us first to Bogota, in Colombia, and then onto Quito, the capital of Ecuador, where we stayed one night, flying out to Baltra (Galapagos' airport) the following day, to arrive a day before we were to join the boat; the thinking being that we could avoid missing the boat if we had any delays along the way.
Getting There
We flew out of Heathrow (Andy's wife generously offering to take us there and pick us up on our return) and the Avianca flight pushed off exactly on time.
It was a long, not terribly comfortable, 10 hours to Bogota, where we arrived in the very early hours of the morning. The seats had about as much legroom as the typical European short-haul flight, so were glad to be off the plane.
After a 4 hour, early hours layover in Bogota airport, we had a relatively short 1.5 hour flight to Quito and arrived about 9:30 on Sunday morning, local time and 6 hours behind UK time.
The approach was impressive with glimpses of the Andes and the mountains around Quito, plus a large gorge between the airport and the city.
Snow capped Andes on the way to Quito
We collected our luggage, happy to see it had arrived as it was most of our dive gear, and found a taxi waiting for us to take us to our hotel.
The road to our hotel looked decidedly dodgy and we wondered what our £40 a night each had bought us, but the reviews were excellent and when we reached a white wall with an electric security gate set into (with an armed guard inside), we figured it was probably going to be OK.
The San Jose de Puembo Hotel actually turned out to be lovely.
Originally a 17th century ranch, it has been extensively extended and modernised around the historic centre, with roomy light and very well kept rooms, both the bedrooms and the public areas.
A large open-plan restaurant was used for dinner (I had a headache, probably a touch of altitude sickness, so skipped that, although Andy said it was excellent) and a smaller, older room for an excellent buffet breakfast, which we took full advantage of before leaving.
We arrived early, so paid $30 extra to book in early and have access to our room before exploring.
Even from our window we could see humming birds and a small group of Llamas or Alpacas roaming the grounds!
Llamas (or Alpacas?) roamed the grounds
Andy had a swim in the pool and then we had a leisurely beer.
We chatted to a Canadian woman who was on her way back from a land based trip to the Galapagos and assured us it was wonderful and we were in for a great time.
I slept very well and we were up fairly early to get a good breakfast and catch our final outbound flight.
Grounds of the hotel in Quito
In a way, it was a shame to leave so soon, but the goal was almost in sight.
Back at the airport, we had to queue to pay $30 for a Transit card to the Galapagos. With that we were able to check in for our flight and then pretty much immediately boarded the plane for another 1.5 hour flight out to the islands.
We were soon out over the sea and then we glimpsed small islands coming into view.
Our first glimpse of the Galapagos
As we touched down on Baltra and taxied towards the single terminal building, we spotted a large Iguana walking through one of the open fronted hangers.
We had arrived!
Land Iguana
We gathered our luggage, paid the hefty Park Fees ($200 in cash! We expected the fee, but I'd missed the fact it was in cash) and then made our way out to a bus that took us through a moonscape (it reminded me of the volcanic landscape of Lanzarote) down to an azure stretch of water.
About to cross 'the Channel' to Santa Cruz
Here were boarded a small flat bottomed boat (very like the boats we dived from in Indonesia) to cross to Santa Cruz island.
A pickup truck was waiting to pick us up and drive us south to Puerto Ayora, where we were to spend the rest of the day and that night before making our way back to the airport the following morning to join the boat.
Along the way, the landscape still looked barren, with many what looked like dead trees (turned out later that they only leaf in the wet season), but as we ascended we found ourselves driving into fog and then, as we started to descend the other side, still under cloud, the vegetation became lush forest and green fields.
Our driver promised a few times that 'in five minutes the sun will come out', but it never did!
Our accommodation in Puerto Ayoroa was the opposite of that in Quito in terms of modernity and facilities, but still full of character.
Sealions on the pier at Puerto Ayora
We were taken by our taxi driver onto a water taxi and crossed over to a part of the town, which had little but a couple of hotels, a few houses and some beaches.
A stiff climb and a short walk took us to the Galapagos Chalet, where we were greeted by the owner.
The Galapagos Chalet is a wooden built house with 3 bedrooms (two upstairs, one down) and kitchen/lounge area. It was pretty basic, if I'm honest, but had a rustic charm. From the upstairs bedroom balcony you could see the sea and the bedroom was comfortable and the shower decently powerful and warm.
The Galapagos Chalet
As a bonus, we were the only guests for our one night stay, so had the run of the place.
Having had to pay the $200 Galapagos Park Fees in cash, we were both a bit short of cash, so we returned on the water taxi to the town, passing a number Sea Lions basking on the pier and boat landings. We'd also see our first Marine Iguana of the trip, but more on those in due course, plus the colourful Sally Lightfoot Crabs, which I found exciting as they featured on the front of a book on Galapagos wildlife I had, much to Andy's amusement.
Sally Lightfoot Crabs
Our first Marine Iguana
We went to a cash point, browsed in a few gift shops (Andy bought a T-Shirt) and then found a pub, The Rock", we'd spotted on our way in that boasted "Craft Beers".
We went in and ordered a beer each, observing how few tourists seemed to be about.
The beer (a Weissbier in my case, but good enough to stand comparison with German ones) went down well and we realised we were hungry and ordered some light snacks for lunch.
My hot wings claimed to be 'the best in the world' - A bold claim, but, while I've not eaten that many, I don't recall eating better.
Eventually we headed out, only to be chased, politely, by the waitress - We'd forgotten to pay!
The breakfast menu looked good, so we planned to return for breakfast.
We made our way back to our Chalet and then, after a while, we took our masks and headed along to the beach (Playa los alemanes), where we snorkeled for about an hour, after an abortive attempt to visit La Grietas, a freshwater channel, which was just closing as we arrived and (unexpectedly, needed a fee to enter, while we'd bought no money with us from the Chalet).
We had kind of hoped to see some Marine Iguanas, but weren't disappointed by the large number of fish, a few stingrays (leading us to tread carefully, a sting from one would have ruined our trip very early!) and Andy even got some video footage of a Heron fishing from arm's length away.
We decided to return to town for dinner and ended up eating at the Red Tuna restaurant.
It was almost empty and we watched a couple of Sealions and a Lava Heron (about the size of a Kingfisher) hunting in the shallows as we ate the delicious, fresh caught, Tuna the propiertor had recommended.
We returned by water taxi in darkness, dropping crews off onto various boats in the harbour as we went, and then decided sleep was calling at the end of our first day in the Galapagos.
Sealions on the Pier
Of course, our body clocks hadn't really adjusted at this point and were both awake at 6AM, so we decided to wander down to the beach again for a while.
We spotted Frigate Birds overhead and a Sea Lion hunting off the beach, but not much more and returned, packed and then headed back to the water taxi pick up point.
There we found an American woman who had slipped on the steps and was awaiting help from her hotel (the hotel boat was waiting with her). We asked if we could help, but although she looked in some pain and shock, she said she was fine and help was coming, so we took a taxi back into town.
Sadly, The Rock wasn't open when we arrived about 8AM and neither were many other restaurants, but we found one, full of locals, close to the Red Tuna, open and decided that if the locals ate there it couldn't be too bad. It had the added advantage of being exactly where our taxi driver had dropped us the previous day and where we expected to be picked up from.
Andy boldly chose what all the locals were eating. A rather strange mix of a cheese and Plantain ball with a meat stew and a tripe stew. I played it safer with an 'American Breakfast' of toast, fried eggs, coffee and fruit juice. The eggs were excellent and a couple of cups of coffee much appreciated.
Just as we were starting to worry if we'd recognise our taxi driver, he arrived and we headed back to the ferry across the channel.
I asked if he could stop if we spotted any Giant Tortoises, as we'd seen a few on the way and they are another of the iconic creatures of the Galapagos.
Andy said we were going to see them on the last day, but I figured it would be good to have a 'banker' photo.
Giant Tortoise in a field by the side of the road
It rained all the way up to the top of the island, but we did stop briefly to get a photo or two of Tortoises.
Our driver left us at the ferry and, having confirmed that we were being picked up at the airport and not recrossing the channel, we hopped aboard the boat and then the bus and made our way back to Baltra airport.
When we arrived, we spotted a man with an 'Aqua' sign, who we approached and introduced ourselves. He introduced himself as Daniel and explained he was one of the guides.
We waited for a while as other guests arrived, enjoying an ice cream in the warm sunshine of the north side of the island, a dramatic contrast to the weather we'd left in Puerto Ayora.
Eventually, we gathered everyone, boarded another bus and set off down to the Baltra jetty and then climbed aboard Zodiac RHIBs to take us out to the Pinguino Explorer, our home for the week.
Our adventure continues on the next page...
