Enjoy Galapagos at bargain prices when you base yourself in Puerto Ayora Santa Cruz island.

When you travel to Galapagos islands: your fixed price plain ticket has been paid for, your $100 for the park entrance fee and the island tax has been paid for, no matter how long you stay.

The bargains are joining "last minute" organized cruises from Puerto Ayora. Most boat tours to Galapagos islands will sell last minute tickets at bargain basement prices.

It was my favorite laid back pass time on Galapagos: just strolling around the harbor, waiting for a boat with a last minute berth and hopping along for a dirt cheap price. Just be prepared that there can be a complete week between these utterly cheap trips to Galapagos islands, but if you love to relax on your holiday, this is a great way to save money.

Strolling around in Puerto Ayora Ecuador

Puerta Ayora is your little "Spanish puerta" or door to both Ecuador and Galapagos:

• no need to spend time in Quito to enjoy Ecuador before boarding on a Galapagos cruise. Just head straight to the Galapagos islands and get acquainted with the people of Ecuador in Puerto Ayora.
   
• strolling around the harbor you will see much of sea creatures already, like this sea lion having an appetite for human legs.

Puerto Ayora Santa Cruz is small and easily navigable, so its straightforward to find your own way around town: the main drag, Charles Darwin, runs east-west along the bay

• at the west end of town you will find the Academy Bay port, the main grocery store, hardware store and the post office
   
• at the east end of town is the famous Charles Darwin Research Station
   
• in between are most of Puerto Ayora’s hotels, bars, shops and the only bank, El Banco del Pacifico.

The hotels in Puerto Ayora are plentiful: from cheap hotel rooms for backpackers for about $6 only in the low season to luxury hotels and oceanfront bed and breakfasts for around $ 75 single / $ 115 double per night.

Overall staying as long as you can in Puerto Ayora Santa Cruz will be worth every penny when you are looking for an affordable stay in what most likely will be your one in a life time travel to Galapagos islands.

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For those like us that get seasick easily on long cruises, Santa Cruz Galapagos is a welcome island to stretch your legs, visit villages with real people and keep off your cruise ship for a few days.

This Santa Cruz map shows you the second biggest of the Galapagos Islands (only Isla Isabela is bigger) with an area of 986 km². Isla Santa Cruz is actually a large dormant volcano with a maximum altitude of 864 meters.

We reached its harbor Puerto Ayora which has the largest human population on the Galapagos islands. The best news however is that this island has many hotels, so you can say goodbye to your cruise ship cabine and enjoy solid ground under your feet for as log as you stay.

Lots of things to see and to do on Isla Santa Cruz Galapagos, we especially enjoyed our bike-rides. Of course there is the Charles Darwin Research Station with Lonesome George – the very last tortoise of his particular species from Pinta Island – and many other giant tortoise preserves.

On a funny note: although Santa Cruz houses the Charles Darwin Research Station, Charles Darwin himself never set foot on this island!

But best of all: Santa Cruz Galapagos is a great place to be when you are not used in sailing for days on the sea like me I will post what we did exactly in Santa Cruz in my next post.

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In order to enjoy South Plaza island the fullest, you need to arrive before the tourists arrive. That means early in the morning greeted by the sea lion colony on the coast and with a lovely sunrise.

The night however from Genovesa Island Galapagos to South Plaza in our little Galapagos cruise was tough: we needed to take 2 and a half tablet of Primatour in order not to get too seasick. But all that was well worth the early arrival: a beautiful sunrise, sea lions, land iguanas and even another blue footed booby.

South Plaza island is famous for it’s typical vegetation: pear cactus trees make the "opuntia cactus forests" and "sesuvium" grows at ground level. It’s red from  June till January and green during the rainy season. Sesuvium is the main nourishment for the large colony of "grazing" land iguanas on South Plaza Island.

A little bit of snorkeling with the awesome sea lions and off we went towards close by Isla Santa Cruz.

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For underwater adventurers, Galapagos Island diving offers thriving reefs, marine life and the best underwater visibility on Earth! Diving for divers of all skill levels and extreme fun diving with the sea lions.

Visibility when diving in Galapagos can go to 30 meter or about 100 feet! This is partially due to the fact that around 70,000 square kilometers of Galapagos islands: the marine areas are protected far enough out of the way to make the destruction of this environment less likely.

Galapagos tours for diving cater for everybody, but due to strong currents, many dive areas are much more appropriate for intermediate and advanced divers. The most impressive dive experiences I had were at about 20 to 30 m deep.

I found the water to be warmer than on the Great Barrier Reef, but do ask the experienced divers on these Galapagos tours for their opinion. It could get as cold as 13 degrees Celsius when you descend to 20 to 30 m. Snorkeling at the surface is fun in water between 18 to 30 degrees Celsius throughout the year.

Since the Galapagos Islands are protected for hunting, expect an enormous variety of marine life: I managed to see lost of reef fish, some sharks, sea lions and even a whale shark!

All in all you should at least snorkel in the Galapagos islands to have an idea of the marine life underneath your cruise ship. For more experienced divers, Galapagos Island diving is a must do for a few days.

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When I look at the map now, I guess I should have known that reaching Genovesa Island Galapagos from Bartolome Island would be difficult.

I agree:

• it’s easy to get on your boat and let them sail through your Galapagos island holiday.
   
• It’s also sounds easy that lots of the distance covered during our Galapagos island cruises would be done at night…

It’s just not at all easy to sleep in a rocky boat when the doors of your cabin cabinets keep on slamming…

So I strongly advice when you are looking for Galapagos cruises to ask for short island hopping trips.

I chose to visit Genovesa Island Galapagos because it is known as "Bird’s Island" and of course I am a number 1 bird lover.

We climbed all the way up the Prince Philips Steps and really that’s birds paradise! I will post pictures of the birds in my next post.

Today I just wanted to show a close up from the smallest marine iguanas living on Genovesa Island Galapagos.

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If you love birds, then make sure to include Genovesa in your Galapagos island cruise.

Why would you put yourself through a night sailing in roughs and getting sea sick like me?

Because from all the islands in your Galapagos cruise, Genovesa is the ideal place to watching countless beautiful birds you wont see anywhere else.

We were lucky our guide spotted a short eared Galapagos owl, which as you can see on the picture blends in perfectly with the Galapagos environment.

Walking from Prince Philip’s Steps towards the black cliffs, it’s cute to see pairs of birds nesting, utterly protected inside the cliffs.

This red-footed booby is the smallest booby in Galapagos and the only one that nests in trees.

Other birds you will surely see without needing binoculars are pigeons, herons, sea-gulls and the above red footed boobies, while frigatebirds fly endlessly searching for food.

If you do love birds and you don’t mind to get seasick (or make sure to bring anti-seasick pills, which I unfortunately forgot…), then make sure to include Genovesa in your Galapagos islands cruise.

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Since lots of visitors are asking me who discovered the Galapagos Islands, let me give you 5 names of importance.

The Incas discovered the Galapagos Islands

Of course you expect western history books to mention a western name when it comes to discovering the America’s or Galapagos.

Most likely though, the Incas already discovered the Galapagos Islands as early as the 15th century. But since no Inca ruins where found on Galapagos nor any written Inca document, this discovery is merely classified as a legend.

Of course there are no written Inca documents found as the Incas didn’t have a written language in the first place, or so we tend to believe.

I mean: if I go on holiday, I do bring souvenirs, so if you are a bit smart and turn my house up side down, you will easily find out which places I have visited. No need to read my blogs nor journals!

The legend goes that Inca king Tupac Yupanqui on his voyage to the west discovery two "Islands of Fire". Some people do believe he discovered Easter Island though…

Tomás de Berlanga discovered the Galapagos Islands

In the 16th century, after the discovery of America, Tomás de Berlanga, the Bishop of Panama was sailing to Peru. His ship was drifting without wind, went off course by the currents and landed on the "Galapagos Islands".

The year was 1535 and unhappy to say the least: Tomás de Berlanga stranded on an island without much water.

He didn’t bother to give the island a name and described it as:

"I do not think there is a place where one might sow a bushel of corn because most of it is full of very big stones and the earth is much like dross, worthless, because it has not the power of raising a little grass."

Of course nowadays everybody trained in survival skills knows to find fresh water on the Galapagos Islands by following the tortoise paths.

Ortelius discovered the Galapagos Islands

Ortelius was the first to name the islands Galapagos Islands, named after the giant saddleback tortoises.

In 1570, the name "Insulae de los Galopegos"
appeared for the first time on Ortelius’s world map.

Ambrose Cowley discovered the Galapagos Islands

Because the Spanish were transporting gold from the Americas to Europe, the English began pirating them. This made the Galapagos Islands an ideal hideaway for the English pirates and buccaneers.

In 1684, buccaneers Ambrose Cowley drew the first navigation chart of the Galapagos Islands and named each of them. A small islet east of Isabela still bears Cowley’s name.

Since fresh water is crucial to the survival of the pirates, it was clearly stated on those maps as Buccaneer Cove on the northwest end of Santiago.

Darwin discovered the Galapagos Islands

Darwin only visited the Galapagos Islands in 1835 but made the Islands famous because of Darwin’s famous theories like:

• the "survival of the fittest" and
   
• "all live evolved out of one entity".

Did you already discover the Galapagos Islands?

Please leave a comment if you ever visited Galapagos so we can add you to our list of people who discovered the Galapagos Islands.

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Baltra Island and San Cristóbal Island are the only 2 airports in Galapagos you can land on to start Galapagos tours.

When you travel to the Galapagos islands, normally you will fly from any destination of the world to Quito, Ecuador. Then you take an airplane to one of the 2 Galapagos islands mentioned above to finally embark on one of the many Galapagos island cruises.

Like other Islands in Galapagos, Baltra island is very dry. Baltra’s vegetation consists mainly of bushes and cactus.  

Baltra island is not within the boundaries of the Galapagos National Park and the many iguanas you will see are not even native to Baltra island: the native Baltra iguana got extinct before the second world war.

So when somebody on those Galapagos island tours stress that Galapagos is The untouched paradise on earth, be reminded on Baltra island: where people land, wildlife is in danger…

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I took a flight from Amsterdam to Quito, but we had to stop in Bonaire and Guayaquil.

It’s a "relatively" short flight: less than 10 hours later we arrived in Bonaire to stretch our legs… Then another 2.5hour flight to Guayaquil and yet another half an hour to Quito…

All in all not easy to reach (and then you are still not at the Galapagos islands) but you are in need of a good night rest!

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Frigate Birds in Galapagos and beyond are the only sea birds that are not waterproofed!

Frigate birds produce hardly any oil and therefore don’t want to land in the ocean. They do attack and rob other seabirds of their fish.

Since they are never in the sea, you will notice them up in the air: they are those large black birds looking like big black kites. And they perform a fast and amazing display when they dive after fish dropped by other seabirds.

Their body is as big as a chicken and the tallest Galapagos frigate bird can have a wingspan reaching more than 7 feet (or 2m).

Although frigate birds seems to have black feathers when you see them flying in the Galapagos sky, their feathers produce different colours when they refract the sunlight:
 

• Magnificent Galapagos Frigate Birds will refract purple colours
   
• Great Galapagos Frigate Birds will refract green colours.

Male frigate birds have a typical red patch of skin at their throat. During courtship, males will force air in this red gular pouch as if they were carrying a big red balloon.

We didn’t see any frigate birds’ courtship when we visited Galapagos, as the birds where hatching when we set foot on the North Seymour Islands.

On the picture you see a female Frigate Bird of Galapagos as females are marked with white colours below.

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