Galapagos!

Ah what a beautiful place. I was a big fan of the Galapagos.

Expensive?

It actually wasn’t terrible in terms of price. Plane ticket from Quito was sub $400 round trip (until we got screwed over by Tame airline— another story).

It was $30/night per person and we had a good set up. And the stuff we did was pretty cheap. Food wasn’t too pricy and we cooked a bit ourselves. The only other cost was the $120 to enter the island for nature purposes. Was peeved about it at first, but I understand now.

Santa Cruz Island

Only had three days there, so we just hung out at Santa Cruz island since there was plenty to do.

• We went to a tortoise reserve and were inches away from these huge turtles

• We went to Charles Darwin Research Center to learn about the turtles

It was cool, they basically saved the turtles and had this center to help them grow before putting them in the wild. Interesting question whether all that $ spent on the project was worthwhile when we could be spending it on other stuff. At the least, the turtles are amazing for environment because they eat tons of grass and plants and then walk around relatively far distances and poop out the seeds.

• We went into some more underground tunnels
• Spent a lot of time at the beach (so nice) — Tortuga Bay, Alemanes Beach, Las Grietas
• Saw lots of Iguanas
• Tortuga bay was incredible
• Went to this Ninguna Lagoon that was pretty at night
• Hung out on the street with a bunch of music and took advantage of some happy hour deals
• Went to this crazy crazy volcanic crater called los Gemelos I think. Too bad my phone couldn’t totally capture it, but real special place.

• On our way back from the crater, we passed this local party and decided to get out and go to it. Some of the best food of my travels for $5 and it was a bunch of games and local families. Think we were the only two white people there out of probably hundreds. Was fun.
• Saw some seals

Admittedly, we didn’t motivate to go snorkeling which is really too bad because it’s supposed to be amazing there. But it was a super relaxing and fun three days.

Thoughts

It was cool that the area wasn’t too touristy. They obviously make tons of money, but seemed like most of the tourists were off on fancy cruises and stuff. There were also lots of old people there on vacation. Seemed like a trend.

We were talking with one of our cab drivers to the airport, and he told us that on Santa Cruz island there are 25,000 people, but that 9,000 of them are illegal. Really interesting. Supposedly, the only way to become a Galapagos citizen and be there for more than 3 months at a time (or something like that) is to marry a citizen. But all these people were living there illegally because there’s good $ to be made. The guy telling us was really upset about it. He had been there since the 70s when there were no roads and they got food from Guayaquil only every 8 months.

There’s so much beauty there and it’s such a unique place, it’s like they want to keep it that way. There are tons of regulations and rules and it seems like so much of the island is barely untouched.

It is really special to be around nature that is so raw. Just the thought that those things have been around and developing into how they are for thousands of years makes us feel really small. Our time in life — 100 years — is such a small blip in comparison. It gives me more empathy for why people get so worked up over environmental destruction. Stuff that’s been around forever gets torn away in months.

I hope Galápagos never changes :)