From Santa Cruz, there are several day trips available to uninhabited islands. Each island offers its own unique opportunities for wildlife viewing, hiking, and/or snorkeling. The most popular options from Santa Cruz include North Seymour, Bartolome, Sante Fe, Pinzon, South Plazas, and Floreana. For us, it came down to a choice between North Seymour and Bartolome. The Bartolome tour focuses on hiking and includes an opportunity to see the most iconic view of the islands. The North Seymour tour focuses on wildlife, with opportunities to see plentiful sea lions, blue-footed boobies, and magnificent frigatebirds. We ultimately chose wildlife over landscape, although if I had it to do over again I would have added on a day to our trip so that we could do both. But we were there primarily to see wildlife and I knew the boys would find this tour much more appealing.
And it was absolutely the right choice for our family. This was probably everyone’s favorite day – and there was stiff competition from both Las Tintoreras and Los Tuneles. But to me, this was the Galapagos that people dream about. Sea lions playing in the ocean and lazing on the beach, mere feet away from you. Magnificent frigatebirds drumming out their guttural mating call and blue-footed boobies performing their mating dance. This trip was one of those pinch-me moments where it seemed unbelievable that we were witnessing all of these amazing creatures in person.
I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t worried about the boat ride to North Seymour. I was absolutely dreading it. Between the inter-island ferries and the ride to Los Tuneles, our family had collectively thrown up at least half a dozen times and been on the brink of it at least a half dozen more. Our agent from book-ec assured me that this would be an easier trip but I still lay in bed the night before worrying about it. Thankfully, my fears were completely unfounded this time! The boat itself was much larger and smoother than anything else we had been on, and the trip itself was relatively short.
We were picked up from our hotel and shuttled across the island to the Itabaca Channel (retracing our route from the airport). Instead of taking the ferry across to Baltra and the airport, we boarded a zodiac boat that took us out to our boat anchored in the harbor. I immediately felt all of the stress release from my shoulders when we boarded the boat. It was not just a speed boat but a small yacht with comfortable indoor and outdoor seating, a kitchen, dining room and bathroom, as well as an upper level for lounging. The smiles immediately came out on the boys’ faces as well. We had all been worried about another bumpy boat ride but could tell right away that this would be different.
The ride was smooth, scenic, and relatively short. In fact, we were really only traveling to the other side of Baltra Island (which is also known as South Seymour). It momentarily felt a little less exotic when I realized how close we were to the airport, but all of those feelings disappeared when we set foot on the first island. The scenery was stunning, the water impossibly blue, and the sea lions literally everywhere.
Due to photo overload, I’ll break the post from this trip into separate ones for each of the islands we visited. Click on the links below to read more about each section of the trip:
