The very long road to San Cristobal

This blog is a hard one to write.  For anyone who has kept up over the past 12 years or so, I started writing primarily as a way to capture our adventures and share with the family (aka my mom) so as not to forget stories or have to repeat everything when we got home.  Over time, it has been a fun way to share our escapades with a broader group of people who, for whatever reason, seem to enjoy reading about our trips.  My mom was always the one to remind me to write, remind me to post, and constantly text me with “when are you posting the next one?”  Without my mom as an audience for the first time, I almost let the tradition go.  But I think she would have wanted me to continue.  With that, this blog on our trip to Galapagos is dedicated to my mom.

Galapagos has been on my bucket list for a long time.  The promise of unspoiled paradise, abundance of marine animals, goofy looking birds, few people – all sounded so appealing.  I started booking the trip in mid-2019 for a spring 2020 departure and had completed all reservations by January of 2020 – including flights to and from mainland Ecuador, flights to and from the islands, our 7 night cruise, one day of scuba diving, 2 nights of hotels on the mainland, and 4 nights of hotels on 2 different islands.  What could go wrong?  Global pandemic was not what came to mind.  Not surprisingly, sometime in mid-March, 2020, we were advised that we should “probably” push our trip back to fall as the world was in lockdown and no one was sure if it would all be over by our departure date at the end of April.  Ha. 

As we were unable to get any refunds, we opted to push the trip back to November 2020.  No problem – Covid should be under control by then.  So, all flights were changed (or we sat on credits); hotels were canceled, scuba was rescheduled, and since we had a new cruise routing, we had to figure out how to get from one island to another in order to hit both our scuba date and our cruise date.  No problem.  As time went on, I received repeated notices from United that our flights had been changed or canceled, and every time I received a notice, I rebooked on a new available flight.  At least a half a dozen times.  As we approached the fall and things were going from bad to worse, we once again opted (were forced to) push the trip back, so we pushed back to April 2021 thinking MAYBE the vaccine could be out and maybe things would be better.  So, once again, hotels canceled, flights changed, cruise rebooked, scuba rebooked. 

By March 2021, it sounded like travel might be slowly opening back up again, so we started planning again, but flights continued to be canceled or changed, and now we had to consider Covid testing into Ecuador, more stringent testing into Galapagos, and testing to get back into the US.  So once again, all flights had to be updated.  When my mom was going through complications with Covid in late March, we tried to push the trip back again, but this time they said we would lose all of the money we paid for the entire trip, and thus by the end of March when the unthinkable happened, we decided to just go. 

Once we committed, we found vaccine appointments – both of us had our second shots before we left – me two days before, and Damon the day we left; we found rapid RT PCR tests that would meet the requirements for both Ecuador & Galapagos, we stocked up on masks and sanitizer, and we were off.  Which brings us to… Monkeyhouse FINALLY goes to the Galapagos Islands!

Getting to the Galapagos Islands was an exercise in patience.  Due to the limited number of flights, it took us three days to ensure that we did not miss any of our connecting flights, because one missed flight would mean rescheduling half our trip,  Friday night, we flew to Orlando because the Saturday morning flight was canceled and this was the only way to ensure we caught our Saturday morning trip to Panama. 

Hyatt Regency IN the Orlando airport.  Taking no chances

If we missed the only flight to Panama, we would miss the only flight available to Guayaquil, Ecuador.  If we couldn’t get to Ecuador, we would miss the flight to San Cristobal Island, which only runs 3 days per week.  And if we missed the Sunday flight to San Cristobal, we would miss our scuba trip and thus there would be no need to go to San Cristobal, which would mean trying to figure out how to get to Santa Cruz Island, which was were our cruise was leaving form on Thursday… logistics aside, all of this also hinged on Damon not having any side effects (fever) from his second vaccine shot, which he got six hours before we boarded our first flight.  Thankfully, no side effects and everything went like clockwork.

Everything going according to plan

A few words about Covid in Ecuador – the city of Guayaquil was hit hard in the early days.  Bodies piling up in the street bad.  But it seemed as though things were a lot more under control, so, it was somewhat of a surprise when we got to our hotel and were notified that one day earlier, the Ecuadorian government declared that 13 of the 16 provinces in Ecuador were under emergency lockdown with a curfew after 8pm on weekdays, and full lockdown on weekends.  We hunkered down in our room and ordered room service and only emerged when our driver arrived at 7:30am – on a Sunday - to take us to the airport.  There was not one other car on the road, and we did not see any people.  Anywhere.  Kind of creepy. 

The check in process for Galapagos gave me some level of confidence that they take Covid seriously.  Everyone headed to Galapagos stood in one long, well-spaced line.  We had to have a travel agent present.  We had to present negative RT PCR tests taken with in 96 hours.  We had our temperature taken upon entering the airport.  We had to provide health declarations, walk through an ozone bath with our luggage, have luggage checked and sealed.  We were sprayed with disinfectant and there was sanitizer all over the airport.  We had to provide proof of every place we were staying on the islands and proof of a return ticket.  Everyone was masked.  When we got to the gate area, there were two flights to Galapagos – one on each of the two airlines.  Everyone sat far apart, and we boarded from the back three rows at a time.  We were advised not to eat or drink or go to the bathroom.  And finally, at long last, we made it to San Cristobal.

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