What Would Darwin Do?

He wouldn't pay for over-priced cruises in the Galapagos when you can do it on your own.

Over spring break we managed to squeeze in two really great trips. One was to Bogota, where we met up with some friends from Venezuela for a week of rock climbing. More on that later. Our second trip was to those little islands of biological diversity, the Galapagos. The Galapagos, of course, is one of those places you must go if you spend any amount of time in Ecuador. The problems is, they are incredibly expensive. It's a $400 dollar flight from Quito, a $100 entry-fee to the islands, and then anywhere from $800 to $3000 dollars for a cruise around the islands. Pretty inaccessible for the likes of us. In fact, most of the folks on those cruises are retirees who are busy ticking off their "I always wanted to see ________" list.

But here's a fact nobody in Quito (at least the tour vendors) will tell you.

You don't have to go on a tour to see the Galapagos.

Erin and I spent five days on two islands and saw everything we could possibly want to see. Granted, it wasn't in the perfect wilderness setting that a boat can take you to, and we did miss some of the more esoteric fauna, but for about $70 a night in hotels, $40 a day in meals, and $40 a day in local tours, we were able to:

• Swim with sea lions
• Play with baby sea lions
• Saw those silly flightless Penguin-birds
  
• Swim with marine turtles
• Mountain bike to secluded coves, beaches, and old prisons
• Swim with 10+ sharks
• Relax on white-sand beaches
• Swim with eagle rays
• Observe blue footed boobys
• Enjoy happy hours at sunset
• Ride a horse up to one of the biggest volcanic craters on the earth
• See a Galapagos hawk

The issue with the Galapagos is that, often, you are charged a premium price for, well to be frank, Ecuadorian quality service. I love Ecuador, but not when I'm paying $13 for a plate of six breaded shrimp and rice. Of course, this problem is the same whether you are on a boat, or, doing it on your own on land--so why pay for the boat? Unless you can afford a premium boat, my advice is to just do the Galapagos as cheap as you can, then you won't be frustrated with the inevitable service hick-ups along the way.

An example:

Some friends paid for a first class boat tour, and found their rooms to smell of Gasoline every night, and the boat broke down several times along the way. Kind of frustrating at $200/day.

We paid to be taken out to a local snorkeling spot on Isabela by a local operator. They drove us to the dock, put us on a boat, and then took us around to a free snorkeling spot that we had walked to the previous day! We protested, and they finally took us to a better spot in the bay that we could not walk to (where we saw the baby sea lion), but it took a fight to get there. Upon the return, the operator did not send a truck to pick us up. We had to walk back to town. When I arrived and protested, the owner looked at me like I was crazy for wanting a ride back--she said, "we never send a car to pick you back up, you're soaking wet stupid gringo." Yeah, like the back of their pick-up would be hurt by my wet ass.

The point is, both trips are frustrating, but ours cost $10.

So, if you are interested in doing it on your own, here is our itinerary, complete with phone numbers and suggested guide-free activities.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=plR-sWt7EqMly9yDmFqTgaQ

And, though the LCD on my viewfinder-less "waterproof-shockproof-freezeproof" camera decided to cease functioning on our first day in the islands, here are my best attempts at photography without being able to see what I'm composing. It's kind of a monster slide show, at 60 photos, but that's down from the 500 we took.