Puerto Ayora (Galápagos)

The currency is the US dollar, adopted in 2000, and Ecuadorian centavo coins circulate with the same value and size as American ones, easy to mix up for days. Almost everything costs 30 to 60% more than on the mainland because it arrives by boat from Guayaquil. Price benchmarks: coffee US$2–3; almuerzo US$5–8; fish dinner at the street stalls US$12–20, with lobster US$25–40; beer US$3–5; hostel US$25–45; midrange hotel US$80–150; full-day trip to an uninhabited island US$180–260; two tank dives US$180–250; a 4- to 8-day cruise US$2,500–6,000 per person. There are Banco del Pacífico and Pichincha ATMs in Puerto Ayora and Puerto Baquerizo, with low withdrawal limits and frequent cash shortages in high season, so bring dollars from the mainland in small bills, and keep the US$200 for the park set aside, because payment on arrival doesn't reliably accept cards. Cards work at hotels and agencies, almost always with a 4 to 12% surcharge; VAT is 15% and is usually included. Tipping isn't mandatory: a 10% service charge already appears on restaurant bills, and on cruises the norm is US$10–25 per person per day, split between guide and crew.

No international flights: arrive via Quito or Guayaquil

There are no international flights to Galápagos, so the route goes through Quito (UIO) or Guayaquil (GYE), on Avianca or LATAM, about 2 hours from Guayaquil and 3 hours from Quito counting the stopover. Before check-in, your luggage goes through the ABG biosecurity inspection, and you must register the INGALA Transit Control Card, US$20 per person, done online since 2025. On arrival, the National Park fee is paid in cash at the airport counter: US$200 per foreign adult, US$100 for children under 12, with reduced rates for Ecuadorians and citizens of the Andean Community (CAN) and Mercosur. From Baltra to Puerto Ayora takes three legs: a bus to the Itabaca Channel (US$5), a five-minute ferry (US$1) and a bus or pickup along the 42 km road (US$5 by bus, about US$25 by pickup), 1 hour to 1 hour 30 minutes in all. If you land on San Cristóbal, you walk ten minutes from the airport to town and won't understand what everyone else is complaining about.

A white pickup truck with a fixed fare, no app

Within Puerto Ayora everything is walkable, and taxis are white pickup trucks with fixed fares of US$1 to 2 in town and about US$25 to the channel. There's no ride-hailing app. The water taxi across Academy Bay costs US$1 by day, leaves from the Muelle de los Pescadores at any time and costs a little more at night. Between the inhabited islands there are speedboats of 2 hours to 2 hours 30 minutes, with fixed departures at 7am and around 3pm and fares of US$35 to 60 per leg (the fare was raised in August 2026 and runs around US$50), plus US$1 to 2 for the water taxi at each end and a US$10 municipal fee when entering Isabela. If you get seasick, consider the nine-seat planes linking Baltra, San Cristóbal and Isabela, at US$170 to 260 per leg. Bikes rent for US$10–15 a day, and the only public transportation besides the airport bus is the vans and buses to Bellavista and Santa Rosa, US$1 with few departures.

Violence isn't the issue in Galápagos: crime rates are among the lowest in Ecuador, and the islands have stayed out of the security crisis that has hit Guayaquil and the mainland coast since 2023–24. If there's anywhere to be careful, it's during your connection on the mainland, not here. What hurts people is the environment. The sun sits right over the equator and the UV index tops 11 at midday, so a serious burn takes twenty minutes, and sunscreen has to be mineral, without oxybenzone, to protect the reefs. Playa Brava, at Tortuga Bay, has a rip current and isn't for swimming, unlike Playa Mansa, fifteen minutes farther along. Male sea lions defend their territory and bite anyone who gets close to females or pups; iguanas and tortoises don't attack, but stepping on a nest is an environmental offense. Tap water is brackish and not safe to drink, so drink filtered water, sold by the jug all over town. Theft is rare and almost always means a bag left alone on the beach. Medical care is basic: there are hospitals in Puerto Ayora and Puerto Baquerizo Moreno and a hyperbaric chamber in Puerto Ayora, but serious cases are flown out to Guayaquil, which makes travel insurance with evacuation coverage all but mandatory if you dive.

Two meters from any animal

Stay two meters from any animal, always, as the park requires: don't touch, don't feed, don't use flash and don't block an animal's path. If a sea lion is lying in the middle of the sidewalk, you're the one who steps around.

Don't leave the marked trail

At visitor sites, walk only on the marked trail and always with a certified naturalist guide. The volcanic ground is fragile, and booby nests sit on the ground, a few centimeters from your feet.

Nothing leaves the island

Taking sand, a shell, lava rock, bone, or coral is an offense, and luggage is searched on the way out too. On the way in, the reverse applies: no seeds, fresh fruit, plants, or meat.

Disposable plastic has been banned since 2015

Bags, straws, and styrofoam don't circulate on the islands. Bring a reusable bottle and refill it at filtered-water stations in hotels and agencies, almost always free.

Greet before asking the price

“Buenos días” or “buenas tardes” opens any conversation in a shop, at a food stall or at a travel agency counter. Leading with the price sounds curt and usually gets you equally curt service.

Boat times are literal

Here the announced hour is the real hour, and the pier calls out names. Arrive with time to spare: missing the departure means missing the day.

US$200 at the counter, in clean bills

Landing without cash. The US$200 park fee is collected as soon as you get off the plane, always in bills, and there's no reliable ATM before that point. A card won't help at that counter, so bring the bills set aside from the mainland.

Forgetting the one-hour time difference

Planning your return by mainland time. Galápagos is one hour behind Quito, and anyone who times the ride to Baltra airport by the mainland clock gets the time wrong and can miss the flight.

A cheap cruise haggled at the dock

Counting on a cheap “last-minute cruise” haggled at the dock. That worked in the 2000s; today a discount, when there is one, runs 10 to 20%, never close to half.

Spending the whole trip in Puerto Ayora

Staying only in Puerto Ayora and never setting foot on an uninhabited island. The sea lions on the port benches can be seen for free, but the bird colonies are on islands 45 minutes to 2 hours away by boat, on a full-day guided tour for US$180–260. Albatross, flightless cormorant and red-footed booby live on even more distant islands, like Española, Fernandina and Genovesa, which the one-day tour from Santa Cruz doesn't reach: to see them, you need a cruise.

Up top it's 15°C and the ground is mud

Heading to the highlands in shorts and sneakers when the garúa sets in. Up there it's 15 to 18°C and a fine rain falls all day; the ground turns to mud. Rubber boots cost about US$10 on the avenue: they're the most useful purchase for that climb.

¿A qué hora sale la lancha?

What time does the boat leave? The most useful question in the archipelago

Un almuerzo, por favor

One almuerzo, please: the fixed menu: soup, main course, and juice

¿Se puede nadar aquí?

Can you swim here? The answer changes from beach to beach

Estoy mareado

I'm seasick: the survival phrase for the two-hour crossings

¡Qué chévere!

How cool: the most common positive adjective in Ecuador

Ñaño / ñaña

Brother / sister, also used between friends and coworkers

The islands and the tallest volcano

The archipelago has about 7,880 km² of land spread across a marine area of roughly 45,000 km², and the equator crosses the north of Isabela, right by Ecuador volcano. Isabela alone accounts for 4,588 km², more than half the total, and is a row of six fused volcanoes; the tallest, Wolf, reaches 1,707 m.

Three currents and two zones

The climate isn't the humid tropics its latitude would suggest: the cold Humboldt Current rises from the south, the warm Panama Current flows down from the north, and the Cromwell equatorial undercurrent hits the archipelago's western side, bringing cold, nutrient-rich water up from the depths. The result is a coastal desert of cacti and dry scrub up to about 200 m of elevation, and above that, a green, humid zone with permanent mist between June and November, home to Bellavista and Santa Rosa and where the giant tortoises climb during the dry season.

Puerto Ayora and the cross-island road

Puerto Ayora sits on the south coast of Santa Cruz, on Bahía Academia, and grew along a single avenue, Charles Darwin, running from the fishermen's pier to the Research Station; the 42 km cross-island road crosses the island to the Itabaca Channel, facing Baltra, and is the most important route in the whole archipelago.

Almost no one here is from here

Almost no one in Galápagos has roots on Galápagos going back more than three generations: there was no permanent pre-Columbian settlement, and today's population came from Manabí, Loja, Guayas, and the rest of the Ecuadorian coast starting in the 1970s. Street culture is the coast transplanted: salsa, bachata, and reggaeton in the bars along the avenue, soccer on television, and ecuavóley, the three-a-side Ecuadorian volleyball played with a high net and a heavy ball, on the courts of Bellavista and Barrio Central in the late afternoon. On top of that sits a small, permanent layer of scientists, naturalist guides, and foreign divers, which has made English a second working language, not a home one.

Tourism: two-thirds of the local economy

The economy runs almost entirely on one thing: about two-thirds of jobs depend on tourism, directly or indirectly, and artisanal fishing, once central, is now regulated by quotas and seasons. That dependence has produced a genuine conservationist identity. Schools teach the names of endemic species, park ranger is a prestigious job and single-use plastic has been banned since 2015. The same dependence created an old friction between fishers and the park, which boiled over in the 1990s over sea cucumbers and led to the occupation of the research station, and that's why the same resident who complains about the rules also defends them.

The finch beak research, since 1973

Science is what these islands have produced most. Peter and Rosemary Grant's research on the islet of Daphne Major, begun in 1973 and kept up for more than forty years, measured finch beaks generation after generation and showed natural selection at work on the timescale of droughts and rains. The islands have almost always been written about by outsiders: by Darwin in 1839, by Herman Melville in The Encantadas in 1854, by Margret Wittmer, who told the Floreana story from the inside in 1959, and by Kurt Vonnegut in 1985, while local literature is mostly the oral tradition of fishermen and settlers.

The Voyage of the Beagle (Charles Darwin, 1839)

The chapter on Galápagos describes the islands before any theory: tortoises lined up to drink, iguanas thrown into the sea that swim back, the unbearable heat of the lava. It reads in an afternoon and explains half of what you see.

The Beak of the Finch (Jonathan Weiner, 1994)

Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, following Peter and Rosemary Grant as they measure finch beaks on the islet of Daphne Major over two decades, showing natural selection operating from one drought to the next.

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Dinner (documentary, 2013)

Rebuilds, through letters and home movies, the Floreana affair of 1929 to 1934: physician Friedrich Ritter, the Wittmer family, the self-proclaimed baroness, and four people who died or vanished without explanation.