What to see on a trip to the Galapagos?

What to see on a trip to the Galapagos?

Although any Galapagos trip (map), It has to offer situations and emotions every traveler can make the most complete and rewarding their experience if it can better combine their interests with more time and resources at its disposal. A trip to the Galapagos it is quite expensive and each additional day should be able to surprise, to deepen their knowledge or intensify the pleasure ... what to see, therefore, in a few days, a week or more?

The Galapagos are a complex, difficult to see it all but impossible to know well.Landscape in Isabela, Galapagos

In fact, the natural elements and distinctive recurring hardly be lost, regardless of the type of Galapagos trip that will take place: the sea lions or wolves of the sea (sea lions, seals of the so-called Galapagos) wallow a bit 'everywhere although in concentrations attitudes and variables,
as well as the bulk of the characteristic fauna: turtles (marine and terrestrial including giant tortoises), iguanas (mostly terrestrial but also marine), penguins (the unique species of Galapagos), boobies (blue-footed, Nazca and the rarest red-legged) and countless other birds including flamingos, albatrosses, finches and birds of prey (like the Galapagos hawk) endogenous. These creatures then divide territories and environments equally characteristic that you have a bit 'here a little' there plans altitude and exposure to winds and currents: the dry environments of low and apparently volcanic islets and deserted shores or dotted with cactus (among many even large Opuntia), those damp of the large islands that are formed in the green hills (often covered by forests of Scalesia) sometimes underlying real steppes, to the freshwater lagoons or brackish and extensions of mangroves, back then, between contrasts and gradations by mountains and volcanoes back to the sea, the rocks and sand of the beautiful beaches (white sand, red and green).

Each major island is unique and different if you browse from the sea or from the land, a visit is never a given.

Emblematic is Isabela, the largest island, which occupies more than half of the land surface of the archipelago, formed and shaped over time by seven volcanoes (some still active and continue to extend it). It, however, in addition to not always be chosen as part of the trip to the Galapagos, is easily visited in its entirety, as part of its north and west can be reached only by sea with the cruise. The south instead, one inhabited, is connected to other parts of the islands and is easily accessible even for a stay in a hotel in different crops around his intimate white beach. Here as elsewhere so a traveler can be forced to view only a part, adopting a certain perspective, in this case with a hike on the highest volcanoes, a bit 'of cheerful snorkeling on the shore and refreshment in the village rather than a number Solitaire journeys, picturesque harbors and rugged walks.

Some places of the Galapagos Islands are beaten because you enter, exit or transit more often.

View of Kicker Rock, Galapagos trip begins (and ends) mostly in Santa Cruz, the island instead more joke that is offered as a great logistic center of the archipelago, from where you can set up day trips by boat to several smaller islands that are so little out of the way even though they are uninhabited and great natural wealth: Bartolome, Plazas, Seymour, Santa Fe. They are also accessible in day Isabela Florena and on which you can take a look even without staying there.

San Cristobal instead is also a starting point for the trip to the Galapagos, but being located east lends itself more as the beginning or end of a journey of exploration ring of 'whole archipelago or just part of the southeast with the islands of Española, or Floreana, its islands (eg Lobos) and those east of Santa Cruz as Santa Fe and Plazas.

Floreana, wild but still inhabited and home to a picturesque village and places of the pirates, it is almost always included in the tours and cruises of every trip to the Galapagos. Staying there is instead generally more difficult unless you lean on tour of the highest class.

Española, Fernandina and Genovesa: the extremes of the Galapagos that hardly touch each other. the Galapagos albatross Fernandina is in the far west of the Galapagos Islands and is usually touched by the sun cruises that visit Isabela west while Spanish is in the far southeast and also is almost exclusively visited by cruises that focus on that area . Genovesa is ultimately projected to the north, and is the northernmost point, over the equator, you can visit routinely. Go further in fact, would only lead to the remotest Darwin and Wolf, and this is only justified for some interesting but expensive diving subaque.

These three islands can provide the direction for eplorazione targeted, in the sense that the planned trip to the Galapagos can be extended in one of these directions, determining what to see and forcing to leave out several other places, in greater numbers in proportion to the maximum time (and then to budget) available.

So, how much time to devote to their trip to the Galapagos?

If time is short, if you want only a small extension just to say "I was there", it would be probably better not to consider the Galapagos. Four days are in fact the least advisable (with a pang in my heart), but often you are obliged and well, better something than nothing at all ... most often just under a week, 5 or 6 days, are a good compromise that justifies costs of flights and to stay still much higher than other places of 'Ecuador or Peru. Just over a week, about 8 days are the optimal duration for those who do not have any particular and complex interests and want to enjoy it fully, without exaggeration and risk maybe getting bored, not knowing quite what to see in most (the atmosphere of the Galapagos Islands is quite different from that of the Maldives, where you can certainly be less active). For everyone else, with a little 'more than disposable income, with a little' fantasy and ad hoc adjustments, you can find almost everything and do your trip to the Galapagos experience a truly important and unique.