As hard as it was to say goodbye to the Galapagos, it’s exciting to be able to get back and share the experience with you. Heck we had a long time at customs because the customs guy wanted to hear all about it too! I’ve had a lot of questions and emails today about the park and how to get here, so this is a post with some more background on that.
The Galapagos National Park was formed in 1959 to protect this unique area, famous for their remoteness and as the place where a young Charles Darwin had his “ah ha” moment and developed his theory of evolution. The Galapagos belong to Ecuador and there are small communities on a few of the larger islands, mostly fishermen and farmers. Now they largely act suppliers to the tourist trade, the expansion of the villages is tightly controlled by the park service. Since the park was set up, school programs in the islands and on the mainland teach children about the rarity and importance of the Galapagos. As such, the locals cherish and protect them, many of them seeking careers as naturalists, scientists, and environmental lawyers.
All of the islands are included in the national park and 97% of the park area is not open to visitors or residents, but kept completely pristine. Many islands have only one trail, just 1-3 km long and the rest is completely untouched. Whether you go with a large group or a private guide, you can only walk on and visit those trails or beaches. You can only visit the islands by boat, anchoring offshore and coming in by zodiac (or rowboat I guess). Arranging your own boat could be possible but would be a major pain, however there are several companies that specialize in Galapagos tours. We booked with Celebrity, they have a small 100 passenger ship specifically for Galapagos.
Anyone visiting the nature trails or snorkel/dive sites must be accompanied by a trained and certified naturalist, with a max of 16 people per naturalist. The naturalist provides education and explanation of the area and it’s animals, but also polices people, making sure they stay on the trails, don’t touch the animals etc. Flash photography is strictly prohibited, it startles the animals, more so than having a human walk right up to them.
No food or wrappers can be brought onto the islands, they don’t want garbage accidently getting on shore. Only water bottles and you must bring them back with you of course. If hats blow off they must be chased down. If you have to use the toilet, well, either you hold it, or in case of extreme need, a zodiac can be radioed to bring you back to the ship (how embarrassing would that be?) :)
Here is one of our guides, Mayra, walking ahead with Mike on one of the Volcanic islands

And this is another guide, William, telling us about one of the native trees at a beach site:
All the guides and all the crew were Ecuadoran, the guides were from the Galapagos specifically. I really liked this, because it means that the money generated by tourism goes into the local economy, my pet peeve has always been the European safari companies that use all European guides and supplies, meaning the locals receive almost no benefit from the millions of dollars generated by the safari industry, although I understand that is changing a lot now.
Anyway, back to the Galapagos. The maximum size ship that is allowed to cruise the islands is 100 person, which was the capacity of our Celebrity Xpedition ship, but only 81 were on board this trip. However, once on land we were divided up into groups of 16 or less and taken in different directions, so we never felt crowded on the trails. If you take a smaller ship, you will still be on shore with 16 people, with a naturalist guide. you may however, get to some of the smaller islands, but the ones we went to are the “must sees”. However, smaller boats often specialize in say diving, or photography.
At least 2 ships co-ordinate to be anchored at the same bay each day, alternating when they bring their guests to shore, to ensure that if any emergency happens with one ship, another one is right there is help out in this remote part of the world.
We were always taken to and from the ship by zodiacs, as is the regulation. Here you can see the ship with 2 zodiacs zipping out to collect us from North Seymour island, with a sea lion posed in the foreground.
The National Park strictly controls where you can land, and where you can snorkel/dive, and at times they open and close various sites to minimize impact on any one place. Because you can only visit accompanied by a certified guide, they will obviously only take you to the open sites.
Some of the landings were rocky and had very discrete steps built into the hill, such that you couldn’t even see them until you were right at them. Most of the time we had “wet” landings, which meant the zodiac got as close to the beach as possible and then you had to jump over the side and wade in the water a little, like at this site:
This photo gives you an idea of a “dry” landing site, this is before we have divided up into the smaller groups for the hike and you’ll also notice the sea lion making his way down the stairs as people come up – this is the fellow who barked at me. Each time we got out of the zodiacs, a crew member was there with a big bag to put our lifejackets in.
To me (and I am sure I don’t have the correct terms here) this island sites were either coastal rocky, coastal beachy or volcanic. Coastal rocky looked like this, and the trails were tricky for walking with lots of big boulders everywhere:
Coastal beachy sites were classic tropical paradise, and even inland the trails on these islands were sandy:
And finally, the volcanic sites which looked like these two:
Most days there would be a swim/snorkel at the end of the hike. we would go ashore with our snorkel gear and leave it on the beach, hitting the water after the hot trails.
On our last snorkel I was especially enjoying the water, swimming in circles, diving down, doing a spin and diving again. I told Mike I was getting in touch with my inner sea lion :). Here’s a photo of the last fellow I saw underwater, zooming over to come play:
I just couldn’t do a post without getting in one of my sea lion shots:). I hope you are enjoying these!