Galápagos Islands - Santa Cruz

We got up at 7 and Lissette and her husband brought us to the airport where we said goodbyes. We tried to self check in but it didn't work for me so we went to the counter. There we were told that we need to pay a fee for Galapagos, which we knew. But as we went to the ticket counter of LATAM, they said that there is a penalty for foreigners that book the cheapest category of flights 🤔 Because this is apparently reserved only for Ecuadorian residents but it didn't say anything about it when I checked in online with the German passport 🥴😤 Anyway... The penalty was then 150$ per person which we payed of course but we were pissed about it for a while 😤 Then we went to the migration of the Galapagos Islands where we got a tourist card, then our whole luggage was checked. You're not allowed to bring plastic bottles and plastic bags on the islands. We had used them as refillable water bottles and laundry bags, so we had to get rid of them... The flight was just a two hour hop over 2000 kilometers offshore until we landed on Baltra Island, located north of Santa Cruz, the main island.
After we landed our luggage got controlled in the airport by a scanner and K9 dogs, mainly for biosecurity I guess. Then we quickly checked at the LATAM counter that we won't need to pay again on the way back 😁 While waiting for the bus we were approached by a guy offering us a snorkeling gear for 5$ because they're flying back. Each rental is the same so it was a pretty good deal. From the airport we took a 10 minute bus to a ferry terminal, then a 5 minute boat ride and then an hour by bus to get to the southern end of the island. On the way we saw a giant tortoise casually walking on the bicycle lane 😳🐢 What a welcome to the Galapagos Islands 🤩

We checked in to our hotel, dropped off our luggage and went straight to the Charles Darwin Station at the outskirts of the town, Puerto Ayora. Right on time when we arrived a tour started to the giant tortoise breeding center. It was exciting seeing these majestic animals so close and the size comparison in their lifespan. We spent two hours there just watching them 😍 Afterwards we made a quick stop at the interpretive center. There were some interesting exhibitions about the wildlife in the islands. But it was overall not a lot and there were donation boxes all around, even the gift shop was "donation" based but had a minimum 🙄
We had thought that there's enough time to go to another spot near town but were told that it'll close by 5 and so we couldn't make it... Instead we went to the dive center to confirm our dive for tomorrow, try our equipment, sign the paperwork and pay. We will go with the divers and get a refresher course on the way to the dive site. So perfect for us! As we have limited time we needed to plan our next days well so we stopped by two agencies until we found one who helped us a lot. There we also reserved the spots on the tours we want to make as they sometimes sell out. Luckily we were able to fit everything we wanted to do into a neat schedule ☺️ We're excited and happy that this went so well!
So we treated ourselves to a delicious dinner at a stand on the popular Kiosko street. I've had finally some seafood again 🍤 while Julia went for rice with beans. Afterwards we went a bit window shopping in the many clothing shops on the main street. Soon afterwards we made our way back to the hotel because we need to get up early tomorrow for the dives. The entire evening the whole town has been noisy with super loud political advertising for an upcoming regional vote. And they had decided to have the meeting after cruising the town center right next to our hotel 🙈
This loud evening concluded our first very exciting and interesting day on the Galapagos Islands.Read more