If there is magic on Earth, this is it.
The Galapagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands situated almost 600 miles off the western coast of mainland Ecuador. The islands are best known for the large number of endemic species, these were studied by Charles Darwin during the second voyage of HMS Beagle.
There are 18 main islands, 3 smaller islands and 107 rocks and islets. With only a week to explore and purse strings to keep tight, we only visited 2 of the islands; Santa Cruz and Isabela.
Many people assume you can reach the islands by boat, but considering they are almost 600 miles away from the shores of Ecuador (to whom the islands belong to) the only way to get there is by plane from either Quito or Guayaquil.
Now, it isn't just quite as simple as hopping on a plane. Given the fragile ecosystem of the islands, the Ecuadorian government has taken several measures to conserve the area and avoid non-native species arriving on the islands.
Once at the airport, we had our bags scanned for live animals, plants and seeds. The bags were then tagged to mark that nothing had been found or removed. We then checked in our luggage and made our way through security. During the flight, the air hostess sprayed the overhead bins with insecticide to further reduce the chance of introducing insects to the islands.
When we had landed, we had to step on a wet mat which sterilised the soles of our shoes before having to pay our entrance to the National Park ($100 each!). Our luggage was then unloaded into a restricted area and the airport staff bought out a sniffer dog! The dog climbed and smelt all the bags (several were pulled out to be checked again) before we were allowed to collect them.
We then had the challenge of getting to Puerto Ayora, the largest town. We had landed on Baltra island, where we got a shuttle bus to a small port. From there we boarded a small ferry boat which took us across a small stretch of water to Santa Cruz island. From here we had to get a taxi for 45 minutes to Puerto Ayora.
Whilst Puerto Ayora is the main hub, you won't find everything here. There is a main strip along the waterfront which has restaurants, hotels and tour company's selling ferry tickets, excursions and last minute deals for cruises. There is one main supermarket, although it doesn't stock everything, we thought it was pretty good and there are a handful of ATMs. Everything costs a lot more than it would on the mainland due to transporting the goods to the islands so expect to pay more. It is also worth noting that many of the other islands don't have ATMs and neither do they except card payments due to poor internet signal so make sure you take enough cash with you when leaving Puerto Ayora!
We spent a few days exploring the area surrounding Puerto Ayora. I would say that you don't really need to spend much time here if you have the money to spend on tours elsewhere. We didn't - just one week on the Galapagos Islands was going to cost us around a months worth of our budget! We spent one day walking through the town and towards Tortuga Bay. It was actually a really lovely path on a boardwalk sheltered by trees until you make it to the beach. The first beach isn't Tortuga Bay though, keep walking right until you make it to a smaller protected bay - Tortuga Bay! We spent a couple of hours here just relaxing and soaking it all in. It's a good place to snorkel as it is shallow, the water is clear and just from the beach we could see various types of rays swimming about. It was here we had our first experience of marine iguanas too. Native to the Galapagos Islands, they lay motionless to gather energy after swimming and make this hilarious snorting sound to get rid of the salt from the sea water.
The following day we spent some time exploring the Charles Darwin research station. The centre has many projects going on such as the removal of introduced species, monitoring the health of animals and plants and setting fishing limits. From here we walked back into the town and went to the fish market - we spent ages watching the pelicans dive for the scraps. We had the most delicious coffee at the 1835 coffee lab (highly recommend) and purchased our ferry tickets to Isabela Island.
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