The Galápagos is a collection of islands around 1000 kilometres from Ecuador mainland. It’s known for its unique biospheres due to its geographical and social isolation, so much so Charles Darwin was inspired to develop the theory of evolution based on evidence found on the islands.
First thing first, a warning: do not book a tour before hand. I got a tour from Galasam, paying almost $800 for 4 days (apparently already cheap), and felt like it was a complete rip-off (I’m pretty sure all the tour operators sell the same products in the end tho).
For two days, much of the “tour” involved walking to beaches like the one pictured above. And trust me, they weren’t anything compared to the Caribbean or Thailand. I didn’t want to swim anyway so I just ended up hanging around for hours.
This salt farm was another stop on the first day. Been there, done that. Not impressed.
The guides also by default assume you speak Spanish, and most didn’t speak English terribly well.
Apart from taking us to a beach, they likewise took us to this “natural pool”. It’s like, c’mon. Most people would disagree with me probably, but honestly I regretted going to Galápagos, wasting all that time and money. I’m not a biologist so I can’t tell the subtle differences between the animals, so to me I felt like there was nothing I hadn’t seen before.
Although of course the unique thing about it for the average tourist is how accessible wild life is everywhere on the island.
And they aren’t usually afraid of humans.
The famed Lonesome George, the last of his kind.
It takes like an hour to get to the main town. The airport is on another island, and Santa Cruz is basically on the other side of the other island.
My recommendation would definitely be to book tours after you get there. They even give you better equipments, and you get more options in what to eat when not every meal’s included in the same restaurant (where I needed to walk 15 minutes for, and was expected to go on my own even on the first night).
When we went to Isla Isabella, we even had to pay for the two short boat trips to the main boat transfer (two hours of hell across the turbulent sea, by the way). I wasn’t told and was under the impression that it was an all-inclusive vacation (it’s supposed to be), and so I only bought $10 for the extra tax (which I was told to carry only the day before), and had to rely on the kind heart of my fellow travellers to pay my fares.
All the planes seemed to have my initials on them.
Difficult to tell but it’s a shark. I didn’t even have to go on a boat for that.
Once again, I was literally just on the rock next to the beach.
Mating season sees the males with a bit of colours.
White teeth sharks. I was satisfied with this so I didn’t even actually snorkel. I’d swam with sharks before anyway.
Lots of cacti.
Marine iguanas were always trying to get the sun.
A natural hole.
The sea lion moved a bit to pose for us better.
jagged little earth 