Day 157: Survival of the Richest

Guayaquil – Baltra – Santa Cruz, Ecuador

Armed with Michel’s Galapagos cheat sheet, we boarded the flight to Galapagos.

As he had told me beforehand, foreigners need to buy Galapagos “visa” of $10. Also, upon landing there, we need to pay the park entrance fee of $100. So, just to get my feet on Galapagos, I had already shelled out $582.

Alright, this may bore you guys, but my friend Steve emailed me asking for the details of getting around and pricing for Galapagos. So anyway, our flight landed in Baltra island, a small military base. From there, we had to take the airline bus to the “canal” in the south of the island. A $0.5 ferry ride brought us to the north of another island called Santa Cruz. Here, we had to go all the way south to Puerto Ayora. It’s the most populated town in Galapagos. We had two options for the commute: a taxi ride that cost $15 for both of us, or a local bus ride that cost $1.80 for each of us. Needless to say, we took the bus.

Puerto Ayora is a small town. It’s totally walkable. We didn’t know it then. We also didn’t know how to locate our hostel. Luckily, taxi ride anywhere around town is only $1.

After settling in, Richard and I went back out to go to the Darwin’s Research Center. Some stuffs we saw along the way:

As for the Darwin’s Research Center itself, there’s nothing much there. I didn’t even bother to take any pictures. However, there was a small patch of beach nearby. Although the water is neither clean nor filled with much marine life, we still went for a swim to cool ourselves.