Galapagos Cruise Review

Galapagos Cruise Questions Which travel company Quito accommodation Flight to Galapagos Boat, cabins, food Weather Typical day; Puerto Ayora Favourite island; landscape Highlights Snorkelling Most useful item/what to pack Disappointments Rating

Which travel company did you use for your Galapagos vacation?

CNH Tours (make an enquiry).

See who else are top operators for Galapagos travel »

Where did you find them?

Some friends of mine from Canada went on a tour with them a couple of years ago and they highly recommended them. I eventually went with their recommendation and I was very happy.

How did they perform?

I thought that everything was excellent. I had no problems whatsoever.

How about your tour guide?

I think he really made the trip. Our guide was a guy named Darwin Alvarez, and he was just very enthusiastic, very high energy and he took the time to answer everybody's questions during the Galapagos cruise. He was really informative. He's very passionate about the islands and it really helped a lot… he explained things really well.

He was born in Ecuador, on the mainland, but then he moved to Galapagos nearly 15 years ago.

I stayed at the Casa Sol B&B (reviews and prices at TripAdvisor) before and after the Galapagos. The people were extremely nice. It was nothing fancy but it was clean and very adequate. But if you get a group of people who want 5-star hotel, the Casa Sol is not for them.

Do you think it's necessary to spend the night in Quito either side of your Galapagos cruise?

You'll need to spend a night before and I would advise staying a night after otherwise it gets really rushed.

Most of the planes from North America don't arrive in Quito before 11pm - like my flight arrived at 11:30pm - so you get in late. Then it takes time to go through customs. I didn't leave the airport until 00:30.

Help with Galapagos flights »

Casa Sol B&B sent a driver to pick me up which was a really good idea considering how late it was. It was just low stress: the guy was right there and we took right off. In the morning I just took a taxi from the hotel to the airport.

All ran smoothly; there were no delays. The flight initiated in Quito and then the plane lands in Guayaquil where they exchange passengers but you don't get off the plane. They just drop passengers off, take more passengers on and then they continue on to the Galapagos from Guayaquil.

The flights arrive to and leave from Baltra which is a small island near Santa Cruz. That's maybe a half hour to an hour drive from Puerto Ayora to the airport.

It was the M/Y Samba.

It was about 20-25m (78ft) and it had 7 cabins. There were 5 crew members and then there was the tour guide. There were 11 of us on this Galapagos cruise.

Normally I just put my backpack on and go by myself, but when I do do a tour, I really prefer a smaller group. We had a very high energy group and we did a lot of things… we were up and going very early every morning and just having a small group is much easier to coordinate and get things done, and you get to see a lot more.

I was travelling alone and we met the rest of the group at the airport as we were all on the same plane.

The guide met us at the airport, we got on a bus that took us to the boat and we stowed our luggage after we found our cabins. The boat took off and then we did a safety drill on the boat within the first hour... from then on we were on the boat the entire time.

What were the cabins like?

Some cabins hold 3 people, some 2. I had a cabin to myself, I got lucky as I was the odd one in the group! If you're used to a boat… the cabins were small with bunk beds… they were tight. But I mean, I've been on boats before - it's a typical cabin you're going to find on a boat.

My cabin shared the bathroom with the crew, but everybody else had their own bathroom.

The boat was very clean; the cabins were clean. They gave you fresh towels every day; they cleaned the boat every day. The boat was well maintained - we had no problems.

Can people charge their camera batteries and use the internet on the boat?

But no, on the boat there was no internet connectivity at all - there's no cellphone reception, nothing. The only place for that was in Puerto Ayora. There are internet café's.

How was the food during your Galapagos cruise?

They provided 3 meals a day and had snacks in between. The food was excellent. Every single meal was fantastic, that was one of the nicest things. I can not rave enough about the food on my Galapagos cruise, it was excellent!

Did you struggle with sea sickness?

No I did not get sea sick at all. There were a couple of people on the Galapagos cruise boat that I know were taking sea sickness medicine but no one got sick. We had no storms. The biggest wave we hit was like a 4-foot, 5-foot wave - that was by far the biggest, so it wasn't bad. But the boat did sway. But I'm a sailor so I was used to it. There were a couple of people on the boat you know… they were not too active! But nobody got sick.

We had no rain. We got into the higher mountains on some days when it was cloudy but as soon as we came down out of the mountains, it became sunny again.

Galapagos weather - temperature and rainfall averages »

The normal scenario for a day is we would have breakfast at 7am and we would be done by 7:30 or 7:45 and by 8 o'clock we would get into a Zodiac and either go hiking for half a day or go snorkelling. Then we would return to the boat where they would have refreshments.

We would have lunch and then go back out: if we snorkelled in the morning we'd go out for a hike (not strenuous) in the afternoon. Sometimes we went to new locations.

Each day of the Galapagos cruise was different but that was the basic scenario.

Dinner was at 7 o'clock every night.

Puerto Ayora

In the beginning we spent about half a day at the Darwin Research Centre which is in Puerto Ayora, and we came back for a full day at the very end of the tour. It was basically just a day where you could spend doing whatever you wanted. I just walked around town - it was like a free day for us.

We stayed at Hotel Fernandina while in Puerto Ayora, which was fine. There was a room mistake and I did not have a single room the first night but they fixed that the next day. I had no problem with the location - it was quiet and the town is small enough that you can walk anywhere.

Every island was unique, had its unique character. There was different wildlife: some had giant tortoises, other had the blue footed boobies and the albatrosses. I really didn't have any one favourite island, I liked them all. They're all very unique.

I remember at the one island while we were watching, there were hundreds of marine iguanas just coming out of the water. I'm not exaggerating when I say hundreds - I mean hundreds!

The thing that surprised me most of all in Galapagos, I expected it to be very lush, because it's on the equator. It's not. It's all volcanic, a lot of rock and lava rock, that kind of thing.

When I was there it was the dry season so a lot of the vegetation was dormant. The wet season is January and February and I guess during then everything turns green and is flowery.

I asked Darwin about that and he said the thing about the wet season is you also have lots of mosquitoes. We had no mosquitoes whatsoever during our time period.

I think seeing the giant Galapagos tortoise. I was the most impressed by them… I mean, they're huge!

And apart from animals, other highlights?

He showed us some of the recent lava flows and that kind of stuff. There's one island where there's coral about half a mile to a mile inland... it was very unique to see coral beds that have risen out of the sea. That was on Isabella, I believe.

The water was very clean - you could see down for a long way. We wore wetsuits: they rented the snorkelling gear and the wetsuits (in addition to the trip) because the water was cool - not cold, but it was definitely cool.

The visibility most of the time was excellent - only once a little bit murky - and the sea life was abundant. We saw hundreds of sea turtles, sharks, marine iguanas and all sorts of fish - I have no idea what their names were.

We didn't do any scuba diving on this Galapagos cruise at all. I saw people scuba diving, but this trip - they were not equipped for scuba diving at all. So you'd have to arrange that separately.

Pretty much everything for the tourist trade comes out of Puerto Ayora. It's a town of about 16,000 people and that's the biggest city on Galapagos.

Basically I travel light. You'll need:

• Towels! You're in the water a lot.

• For the hikes a good pair of tennis shoes or good hiking shoes are fine. On some of the hikes I even wore my sandals. It's not like you're going out backpacking on the hikes.

• And just t-shirts and shorts 90% of the time. Dress was informal all the time.

Still not sure what to pack? Check out the Galapagos packing list »

I've travelled a lot in Latin-American countries… Americans want everything right away and you have to realise that in Latin-America you have to be patient because people take their time. You just have to be patient with the people, that's all. The people are very nice but you know Americans want things like right now and it just doesn't happen down there. It's just a different culture.

No, not at all, nothing. I would do it again.

I would give it a 9.