I must say my first impressions of the Galapagos weren't that great. The airport was OK but nothing special. Transport to the main town involves a short free bus ride to a ferry across a narrow channel, and then a cheap local bus for the 45 minute trip to the town. The buses and ferry were just the normal fairly crappy contraptions, and the journey passed by a couple of small but dirty and untidy little villages. Strolling around the main town itself didn't dispell the general impression of the whole place being quite grubby really. This all came as a bit of a surprise, since all you hear about the Galapagos from the guidebooks, the internet and other travellers (after the animals and Evolution of course), is how expensive everything is - so I expected the place to be a lot more affluent looking.
Anyway, our first priority was getting accomodation sorted, so Sarah strolled around while I watched our bags and had a beer! She got a reasonable price at the Hostel Sir Francis Drake and so with that sorted we explored the town a wee bit more. It was pretty mad just strolling down to the pier and walked up to pelicans, marine iguanas, bright red and yellow crabs and sea lions all lounging around and not much bothered by all the humans. We just took it easy for the rest of the day really, deciding to wait until the following day to tackle the nasty job of trying to find a cheap, last-minute cruise around the islands themselves (by far the best way to see most of the islands and the wildlife, as access to nearly all the sites is strictly controlled and you need to be part of a group).So early the next morning we strolled about the town popping into the offices of various cruise ships (all mad expensive), and then the tour operators mentioned in the guidebooks (a lot cheaper, but still pricey). It quickly became clear that everywhere was offering the same kind of deals for the same kind of price, the cheapest price we found for an 8-day cruise being (US$1050 each).
Although I was half thinking I might just do a cheaper 5-day cruise instead, we'd been quoted US$1100 in Guayaquil, so I decided to just give them a ring and see if their price had dropped, as we knew their cruise was starting the following day and that they originally had 5 spaces to fill.
So over the phone they quoted the lower price of US$1000, but their cruise departed from a different island (San Cristobal) that would be a hassle for us to get to, and I felt a bit nervous about booking a trip over the phone, and I felt that was still a high price so I said 'No thanks!'. As I'm about to hang up the guy suddenly says he might be able to go lower, but he'd need to check with his boss. He asked me to phone again later that afternoon, and that if we did go for his cruise we could catch a speedboat to San Cristobal the next morning in time to meet the ship (basically these guys literally wait right up to the last minute to try and get the best price they can).
In the meantime we strolled about a bit more and checked the speedboats to San Cristobal, only to discover that all the speedboats leave at 2pm and wouldn't arrive in San Cristobal until about 4:30pm - i.e. there were no speedboats in the mornings at all. That meant that if we took this cruise we'd have to book it immediately, check-out of our hostel and get the 2pm speedboat that afternoon - it was now 1pm!
So we ring the guy back and explain that we need his very best price now, and he tells Sarah his new price is $900 each, and so right there and then I decide we'll take it! While checking out scuba diving options the evening before, we'd heard from an English girl who married a local guy that any cruise under $1000 was a fantastic price, basically impossible to get, although later we discovered that a Dutch couple on our boat got the very same cruise for $800 (and later we meet another couple who got an 8-day cruise for $750, but on a really crappy boat - although they got upgraded to a brilliant boat due to overbooking!!). So basically the whole system is a bit screwed up, but now in low-season I reckon anything is possible if you're prepared to shop around and push your luck a bit.
I'm mentioning all these prices by the way, even though the tour operator asked us not to discuss our price with anyone, because a Spanish couple on our boat paid $1500 each. Now I know last-minute prices are always better (and by last-minute I mean literally that, not the day before a cruise or anything - our guy only came down to $900 because we had to catch the speedboat 45 minutes later), but $600 per person extra is basically daylight robbery. I didn't have the heart to tell that couple they'd been rightly ripped-off, especially as they'd gotten that price from the wife of an Ecuadorian 'friend' (one of the Spaniards is working here in Ecuador)! So basically I have little sympathy for these tour operators - I don't know why they can't just offer everyone a fair price. Also I couldn't get any reliable information on the Internet about what a fair price for an 8-day cruise would be, so maybe someone searching for 'Cheap last minute Galapagos tours' will find the information above helpful.
Anyway, after a very panicky 45 minutes of running to the bank because the tour operator would only accept a cash transfer (and then Sarah thinking she'd have to queue in the massive queue for a cashier, but then going to the customer service desk instead!), doing the money transfer amazingly quickly in under 5 minutes, running back to our hostel to pack, running to buy the speedboat ticket, running down to the pier, and then running all around the pier looking for the right speedboat, we finally set off for San Cristobal island (25 minutes late!).
The speedboat was pretty much full with 12 people onboard, and had 3 outboard motors totally a mighty 500 horsepower, so we screamed along bouncing around quite a bit, which was great fun and reminded me of the dodgem's at Funderland. On the trip out we saw a huge manta ray jumping straight up out of the water, but it was a fair distance away (we saw another one doing exactly the same thing, only much closer, a few days later from the cruise boat while we were sitting chatting with some of the other passengers over coffee (it jumped 6 or 7 times)).
So safely on San Cristobal we had to walk a bit to find a hostel (I later discovered I had walked right past a big street map on the pier!), but settled into the lovely Hotel Cactus for the night. We went for a delicious cheap local dinner that night and checked out the local tour agency office to make sure they were expecting us. They were really nice, and they were expecting us, and even told us we could have a free breakfast the next morning at their restaurant before joining the cruise at noon. So as happy as Larry we strolled back to the hostel and looked forward to our Galapagos cruise the next day.
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