Friday 1st November 2013
Our fourth night in Quito was our last. We woke at 4am to catch a 6am flight. We flew to Guyaquil, waited on the plane for an hour, while some passengers left and others boarded, and arrived in Baltra (a small island north of Isla Santa Cruz) at 10am local time. Galapagos is 1000km west of the coast of Ecuador and an hour behind. After arriving in Baltra airport, we took a bus and then a water taxi to the northern port on Santa Cruz. From there, it was a good couple of hours on a bus to Puerto Ayora, on the southern coast of the Island. On the journey the island did not look anywhere near as lush as I expected, but I guess that was me being naive as I really didn’t know much about the geology of the islands before our trip.
On arrival at Puerto Ayora, famished, we had lunch in the first place we found and then got a taxi to our hostel. Accommodation on the islands is relatively expensive; a shared room costs almost double the amount we paid for a private room in Quito. Since it was only one night before our first class cruise we opted for our first night in a shared room. On arrival at the hostel we were greeted by Kevin, the hostel owner, who I later realised reminded me a bit of Forrest Gump. He gave us the spiel about the hostel and then offered to give us a tour around town. 10 minutes later he took us and a few others on the tour in a couple of taxis, complete with walkie-talkie and showed us all the useful places (laundry, cash machines, nice restaurants, bars, etc.).
The walk through town was lovely. I had expected the place to be bustling with tourists but it wasn’t. Puerto Ayora couldn’t be more different to Quito. It’s a tiny, sleepy little port which feels like a beach town, and yet the largest town in all of Galapagos. The pier is only big enough for speed boats, pangas and alike which ferry up to eight passengers at a time people between the islands and cruise boats (which anchor a distance away) via the pier. The cruise boats are also pretty small in general, they have a maximum legal tourist capacity per licensed guide of 16 on Galapagos so while you can get larger capacity boats (with up to 100 passenger capacity and so more than one guide on board), they are rare and we didn’t see any during our time on the islands.
Charles Darwin Drive is the main street which runs almost across the whole town along the coast. It has cute little shops, bars and restaurants running along it and at the top is the Charles Darwin Station, a giant tortoise breeding centre. You can walk across the whole town at a leisurely pace in about 20 minutes and along Charles Darwin Drive in 10; for our tour of the town with Kevin, we walked the length of it. We didn’t realise that on that short walk we would see, brown pelicans, great blue herons, frigate birds, lava gulls, yellow warblers, marine iguanas and sea lions, otherwise we would have taken our camera!
Kevin explained that there was no violent crime in the town and we could get drunk and walk back to the hostel at any time of the day and feel completely safe. After spending three days in Quito with no jewellery on and wondering if it was safe to walk back to the hotel at night, that was nice to hear. By the end of our tour we were looking forward to spending more time on the islands.
Afterwards we headed back to the hostel to shower, change and (much to the delight of my ever-growing swankle) spent a relaxing evening in town, drinking caipirinha, looking over the ocean.
Ramblers Rumblings 