Amazing wildlife, beautiful scenery, interesting natural/geologic history, unique. That’s what we were promised…and we weren’t disappointed. You read up about a trip like this (it was a long time in the planning) and you hope at least 50% of what you learn proves to be true.
You aren’t really prepared for the whole thing to exceed those expectations. Every island is different (geologically, the terrain, landscape etc) and the variety and sheer volume of wildlife is breathtaking. We saw blue footed boobies, magnificent frigate birds, and swallow-tail gulls, land iguanas, lava lizards (and that was just the first afternoon).
All visits to the Islands are controlled, which means that groups of no more than 16 are lead by a naturalist. You do have to stay with the naturalist (no wandering around on your own) and there are strict guidelines about what you can and can’t do on the island. The key imperative is to protect the wildlife, some of which can only be found in the Galapagos. Quite right too, shame there is always the odd numpty who is uniquely exempt from such considerations.
The wildlife by and large fears for little in the way of predators. The “Sally Lightfoot crab” must feel it drew the short straw, preyed on by the birds of the islands. The animals and birds don’t therefore fear humans, which means you get a unique opportunity to get very close to some wonderful creatures, although the naturalists impose a six foot minimum to keep the intrusion as non invasive as possible. This still seemed a little worrying to some of us, but the animals ‘appeared’ to show no distress (mainly just disinterest!)
Over the seven days in addition to those already mentioned we also saw an abundance of sea lions and their pups, marine and land iguanas, rays, sharks, sea turtles, flightless cormorants, albatrosses and their young, the Galapagos hawk and mockingbird, warblers and finches and, of course, the giant tortoise. And even more, which I will no doubt only recall when I sort out the 1400 photos we took.
Two trips a day (early in the morning, late in the afternoon), dry and wet landings from the pangas (zodiacs), opportunities for snorkelling and swimming, excellent naturalists who clearly cared about what they were doing and a lovely ship to relax on in between the island visits.
It’s not a cheap trip but, as the saying goes, if there’s one thing you do before you peg it, this would be it!
We also got a chance to see Quito (Equador’s capital) before we went to the islands and the city is also well worth a visit if you can combine the two. The old town is a world heritage site and historically and architecturally fascinating, obviously very Spanish in influence. After the islands, we also managed to get beyond Quito for a day in a Cloud Forest (a rainforest environment without the rain), which was of value in its own right. Simply couldn’t compete with the Galapagos Islands!!