I was unsure as to whether or not I would go to the Galapagos Islands. But I met some fellow travellers who raved about it and really recommended it. They said the flight there is the most expensive thing; once you're there it's cheap. I'd heard flights were about $400 return. They said they paid $500. So I was keen to go after they really talked it up. I spoke to others about flights and the general impression was that Ecuadorians get flights for cheap whilst foreigners have to pay double, about $400. Someone told me, if you're lucky you could find a flight for $300. So anyway, I went about looking at flights online. I was quite excited to find a cheap flight but in fine print it said the price was only available for Ecuadorians. But anyway, I kept looking and on expedia.com I found a return flight for $158. I was pretty frkn excited. I booked it straight away.
Next day I told some other travellers and they just dismissed it saying, 'yeah, that's Ecuadorian prices.' It deflated my excitement somewhat and I was a bit concerned that I might have to pay extra. I phoned expedia and they had never come across a case of a price only being available for locals. But anyway, just to check, the guy rang the airline. But the phone connection cut out so I never got an answer. So I thought I could email the airline myself, but in the end I thought I'd just wait till the departure day came and see what happens at check-in. If they don't allow me to fly on that ticket then I’d cancel the trip.
So on the day, I arrived at the airport three hours before take-off. For flights to Galapagos you only need to be two hours but I had to check-out of my hotel so I arrived early. I went to the check-in counter and I gave my name and the staff spoke about me as if they were expecting me. One woman said, 'Come with me.' I followed her and she told me my flight had been cancelled and that they were putting me on another flight, with another airline, that was leaving right away. So I got rushed through check-in in front of everyone who was already lined up, and then pushed to the front of the departure tax queue and later straight to the departure gate. Woohoo. I was on my way to the Galapagos, baby.
I was on my way, but I hadn’t planned anything (hotels, tours, etc). Nor did I know very much about the islands. The main image I had in my head of the Galapagos was of sea-lions sleeping on park benches. So I arrived on San Cristobal Island and asked the taxi driver to take me to a hotel. After checking-in, I took a walk 100 metres down the street to the waterfront/pier and immediately I came across some sea-lions lying on the footpath. I don’t know why, but I didn’t expect to come across the stereotypical Galapagos Islands experience so soon after arriving. As I walked further along the main drag, I saw sea-lions everywhere, lying on benches, lying under trees and generally just in the way of pedestrians.
This was just the beginning of an overload of wildlife … and amazing sights. Over the next few days I went on some excursions around the island. I went on a snorkelling tour to some giant rocks offshore called León Dormido (sleeping lion), as the silhouette looks like an African lion lying down. After the initial shock of jumping in to the ice cold sea, I saw many fish, half a dozen large marine turtles, two big spotted eagle rays, and the icing on the cake … sharks. In total I saw four Galapagos sharks. I was pretty excited. I’d never seen sharks in the wild before. They looked exactly like the stereotypical image of a shark and were about two metres long. I was told they were harmless to humans, but even still I didn’t go up to them and introduce myself. I stayed about ten metres away. Closer to shore at a small inlet at Cerro Tijeretas whilst snorkelling there, I was joined by a young sea-lion checking me out and keen to play. It freaked me out when it first showed up. With a face mask on blinkering my view I didn’t see it coming.
Another excursion saw me taking in the sights of the island’s highlands: an inactive volcano crater that is now a small freshwater lake; the Galapaguera, a breeding centre for the iconic Galapagos tortoises; and a visit to Porto Chino, a beach on the north-east coast of the island. The amazing thing here, and just like the main beach, Playa Mann, located in town, is seeing families share the beach with families of sea-lions - both aware of the other’s presence but both going about their business without disturbing the other.
The Galapagos archipelago consists of 18 main islands, three smaller islands, and scores of uninhabited rocks sticking above the sea surface. On day five I took a ferry to another of the main islands, Santa Cruz, to stay there for a few days and experience the different natural wonders on offer there.I did a morning taxi tour to see some lava tunnels. These were natural tunnels under the ground a couple of kilometres long, created by lava flow from a previous volcano eruption that one could walk through. It was amazing how large and wide the tunnels were in some places – as big as a subway tunnel. We stopped to see Los Gemelos, twin volcano craters within a few hundred metres of each other, inactive these days and now overrun by thick vegetation. The tour finished off with a visit to the El Chato Tortoise Reserve where gigantic tortoises can be seen roaming free in the wild, in some parts of the reserve sharing the field with cows.
In the afternoon, I was in the sea again snorkelling around an islet a few minutes by boat from the main port. Once again, the water was freezing. Many people decided against going in the water. I was lucky to have a wet suit, but even still, after about 15 minutes I couldn’t put up with it any longer. The real heroes here were the Costa Rican woman that went snorkelling in just a bikini and a German guy in just speedos. The tour also included a visit to the beach where we saw lots of rocks. But on closer inspection we discovered that the rocks were covered with iguanas of all sizes huddled together keeping warm. You had to watch where you were walking or otherwise you could step on an iguana. Actually, that was the case throughout the whole islands. If it wasn’t sea-lions in the street or iguanas sunning themselves on the pier it was hand-sized crabs bathing on the rocks. The tour culminated in another swim, this time at Las Griettas, a small canyon 50 metres long filled with crystal clear water at a more bearable temperature.
That night I watched the town folk go crazy and celebrate Ecuador’s classification in to the football world cup next year. Convoys of people on motorbikes, and pick-up trucks full of people on the back, did laps around the town centre cheering, beeping horns and waiving the national flag.
The next day I went it alone and walked along the 2.5 kilometre trail to the beach of Tortuga Bay. The trail passed through thick vegetation with lots of birds, lizards and cacti. I even saw a wild cat. The beach itself was quite beautiful but too dangerous to swim due to strong currents. Unless of course you’re a marine iguana in which there were many swimming or lying on the sand. Further up the beach were mangroves where it was possible to see white tip sharks but I didn’t realize and walked back to town.
The next island on my list was Isabela, the largest island in all of the archipelago. To get there I took another ferry. I say ferry but really, like all the island hops, it was a motor boat that carried about 18 passengers. The average ferry crossing was two hours. These crossings were tough. Due to the boat’s small size and the rough seas, many people got sick. I’m normally fine on the sea but the violent movement through the water gave me a strong head ache. Usually I was fine if I could sit at the back where there was less movement and I could get some wind on my face to keep me cool. It never happened on any of the four crossings I took but I heard stories from other travellers of people throwing-up on board setting off a chain reaction causing others to throw-up as well. The trip was so boring too. The two hours always dragged on and on. The departures were early in the morning too, 6 or 7am, so being up so early was also a shock to the system. I met people who saw dolphins during their ferry trip but I never had such luck. After the crossing and back on land, I always felt a bit dizzy, like I was still on the boat swaying from side to side.
I arrived at Isabela during a rare sunny day which was perfect for walking along the paradisiacal beach and/or going for a swim. I went swimming at Concha de Perla, a natural pool close to the docks that one could reach by walking along a boardwalk through the mangroves and often past iguanas or sea-lions lying in the way. When I reached the pool there was just one person there, a young Argentinian woman. She pointed out to me that there were penguins sitting on the rocks about fifty metres out from the boardwalk. I jumped in and swam out to the rocks and sat about five metres away from them. There were four of them; they were small, only about 30 centimetres high. They almost didn’t look real, standing motionless in the sun, and then one of them shook its wings. Without my camera I took a mental snapshot of the penguins and swam back to the boardwalk. Not long later more people arrived at the pool and the penguins subsequently disappeared.
Another snorkelling tour, this time at a place called The Tunnels, so named because of the archways lava had made through the rocks that now sat in the sea. I can’t describe how incredible the scape looked: rocks littered with cacti and nesting birds, with canals of water around the rocks infested with green turtles and spotted eagle rays. It was like being at a water theme park.
After another 20 minutes snorkelling in circles and freezing my tits off I vowed that this would be my last snorkelling adventure even though there were more snorkelling excursions I hadn’t done yet. I got out of the boat shivering like someone being electrocuted. But a few minutes later I jumped back in the sea for one last time when there was the possibility of seeing sharks. And success. The tour guide and I swam past some rocks and into a clearing and spied a white tip shark slowing cruising past. Awesome. After that I was straight back to the boat to warm up again.
Driving back to Isabela’s port the captain spotted something in the water. He slowed the boat down to take a closer look. Suddenly, what looked like a shark fin surfaced out of the water and moved past the right side of the boat (or the starboard side, for those sailing aficionados amongst us). But as we got a closer look we saw that it was not one, but two manta rays. It was very exciting. These guys are rare – black on back with white underbellies. They looked huge, too, about two metres in width, which is actually small for manta rays as they can grow from five to seven metres wide. But even still they were big enough, as big as a blanket. They moved so slowly and gracefully, and after a few minutes circling beside the boat they submerged out of sight.
Day 3 on Isabela, I did a land tour: a five hour hike to the volcanoes of Sierra Negra and Volcan Chico. This was a different landscape altogether, like the moon, just rock and cacti that have adapted to live and survive from the air rather than having a deep root system that needs water. The caldera of the active Sierra Negra, it’s last eruption was in 2005, is the second largest in the world: two km’s deep, nine km’s long, and seven km’s wide. We sat and had lunch at Volcan Chico and due to the clear sunny day we could see some of the other islands such as Fernandina, Santiago and Los 4 Hermanos. Far in to the distance we could see the northern hemisphere. The equator passes through the far north end of Isabela Island.
Well, my plan was to stay on Isabela for five days as I found it to be the most raw and wild and laid back. But it was this remoteness that went against me in the end. After the volcano hike I found out there are no ATM’s on the island, unlike San Cristobal and Santa Cruz. I was almost out of money so this meant, basically, I had to return to Santa Cruz the next day, two days earlier than planned. But I was so grateful that I had just enough to cover my hotel bill and buy a ticket for the ferry with $11 left over. It would have sucked big time had I been in the situation where I was stuck on the island without any money.
Rather than wake at the crack of dawn wandering around in a daze to catch the 6am ferry, I decided to have a lie-in and take the afternoon ferry leaving at 3pm. I was on holidays after all. That left me with the morning free to check out a few more things before I left.
I wandered by the Iguana Crossing, a crossing on the west side of town between the beach and the lagoons where the Iguanas like to cross. Naturally they have right of way over the traffic. My mission though was to see some flamingos. Rumour was that they could be found at some of the lagoons. From the Iguana Crossing I took the boardwalk through a lagoon to another tortoise breeding centre. It was a privilege to see huge Galapagos tortoises again but there had been no flamingos along the way. I overheard a German couple ask a park ranger about the flamingos and he gave them directions to another lagoon nearby. I didn’t really pay attention thinking the lagoon would be easy to find but when I went in search of it I took a wrong turn and ended up on private property. The aggressive guard dog was a big clue that I’d gone the wrong way. I retraced my steps and received directions from a local and discovered the lagoon. Mission accomplished. There were about 20 of the little pink fuckers wading through the lagoon looking for food. I stayed for ages watching them prance about, and sometimes squabbling with each other over territory.
The next mission was to visit the Wall of Tears.
From 1945-1959, a penal colony existed on the island hosting the worst prisoners in the Ecuadorian prison system. The prisoners were forced to build a wall, stone by stone, largely just to keep the prisoners occupied. The wall stands at 25 metres high and about 30 metres long in which locals claim to hear cries emanating from the site. The prisoners were cruelly treated and many lost their lives during the construction of the wall. A phrase on an information board at the site reads, ‘The tough cried, whilst the weak died.’
With only three hours up my sleeve before the ferry departure and the Wall five kilometres out of town I decided to hire a mountain bike to get to the wall. I can’t remember the last time I rode a bike, but as the saying goes you never forget. There were plenty of things to see along the way – beaches, lakes, look-outs – but I kept peddling as so as to get back in time for the ferry.After 40 minutes I stopped for a break. I was knackered. The last stretch of dirt road had been largely uphill. But for my rest stop I stopped at a look-out which required climbing about fifty steps up to the viewing deck. My legs were like jelly by the end of it. With no idea how much further I had to go, I contemplated giving up on going to the wall and returning to town in plenty of time for the ferry. I decided to continue for a bit longer. The track continued to ascend. Oh, how I was going to enjoy riding downhill on the way back. Wouldn’t you know it, it was only another two minutes and I arrived at the wall.
Upon boarding the ferry, I made sure to get a much sort after seat at the back. However, one of the crew members offered all on board the opportunity for three of us to sit on the top deck with the captain. I expected there to be a rush of hands go up to volunteer for the seats but no one was interested. I certainly was. I thought it would be less monotonous up there and less claustrophobic. With the wind on my face I was sure to feel fine. I think everyone else thought being higher up, the swaying from side to side would be more pronounced and thus more conducive to feeling ill. As more people boarded the boat I was joined by a young Canadian couple. They told me they had thrown-up on their last ferry crossing and wanted to sit upstairs for the fresh air.
The sea was angry that day my friends. It was a very dark and windy afternoon and the boat tilted from side to side. Being on the top deck did mean we moved around more but I was happy. The Canadian guy and I got talking which helped pass the time. Also during the trip the captain let us steer the boat for a while whilst he took photos of us with our cameras. Because of the strong currents it took us longer than usual to reach Santa Cruz, nearly three hours. I was so ready to get off that boat. It had just gone dark when we arrived in port. As the passengers filled in to the boat taxi to go to the docks one of them asked me how it was up top. I said it was quite a wild ride and explained how the captain had let us steer the boat. He and his girlfriend both looked at each other and one of them said, ‘Ah, is that what was going on?’ I’m not sure what they meant by that comment but I think they mistook our driving for the rough conditions.
It was good to be back on dry land and have access to a money machine again. As I walked around town, it was funny seeing the same familiar faces of tourists I’d seen on the other islands. I spent just the one night in Santa Cruz and the next day caught the afternoon ferry back to San Cristobal. That would be my last ferry crossing during my time in the Galapagos and I was glad to have it behind me.
The last three days before my flight back to Guayaquil were relaxing, lazy days. Having already seen the sights and done the tours I just hung around town walking amongst the sea-lions, taking in the sunsets and eating with the locals in various restaurants. The day came for my return flight and all went super smoothly. There were a few people on my flight who had been at the airport all day due to their morning flight being cancelled. But for me, all good; once again, there was no action taken regarding the price of my ticket. Result.
I arrived in Guayaquil after having thoroughly enjoyed my two week adventure. It was an experience that heightened the senses, an education of Mother Nature – its animals, plants, the earth. Like the two travellers I met, I’d recommend the Galapagos Islands to anyone. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s cheap but depends where you’re from and what you compare it to.
The good times in the Galapagos only served to strengthen my love affair with Ecuador and its people. And it would appear that in turn they have accepted me as one of their own, letting my fly at Ecuadorian prices.
