South America Travel Log

My husband and I just returned from 8 days in the Galapagos. It was an AMAZING trip! Those of you who are contemplating it, if you like marine life, I would say this is the best marine adventure I’ve been on even without diving. I’m sure if you are a diver it is even better.

The islands were incredible, but the travel agency called GalapagosOptions was not. I think they were the most incompetent group of people I have ever worked with before on anything!

I don’t want to drag the story on and on, so if anyone has any particular questions you can PM me, but here are the basics of what they did wrong.

1. They caused a 2 day delay in our being able to leave for the Galapagos because they did not give us the correct documents we needed to travel with. Then they blamed the airline when it didn’t work. It was clearly not the airlines fault. We had to spend 6 hours the first day trying to sort out their 1st mistake.
Dayanna told us the problem was sorted out and we now had a new booking. It turns out all she had done was put us on a stand by list and we spent 5 hours in the airport the next day waiting and then once we figured out what had happened demanding an actual booking so we wouldn’t be on a permanent standby list during tourist high season when there aren’t a lot of available seats.
So 2 days and 11 hours of time in the airport later we were finally able to fly out.

2. The reason we booked the tour in the 1st place was because I didn’t want to be on a boat. This tour had some good ideas. You visit 3 islands. They arranged all the hotels and transportation as well as some activities.
Sounded good, but we were left stranded 3 out of the 4 times someone was supposed to meet us. So, we ended up having to find our own way.

3. Their website includes a great deal of false information. Including the following:
*It says the hotels have airconditioning. Only 1 of the 3 actually does.
*It says that there are 2 options for the day in San Cristobal. It does not mention that if you go on the highland trip, it is included in the price. If you go on the snorkeling trip, they will charge you $45 extra dollars. You don’t find that out until you get to the island
*It says all transfers are included, but then you have to pay for water taxi’s etc. by yourself. (a small amount of money that probably adds up to $3 in total,)They do not list this in the things you are responsible for paying for.
*The website includes Santa Fe in the islands you visit, but all it is in the end is that the water taxi between Santa Cruz and San Cristobal passes by the island at high speeds, so you can see it as you zoom by, but you don’t get a chance to appreciate or visit the island in any way.

4. One time, their contact on Santa Cruz hadn’t bought our boat tickets like he was supposed to. When we went to pick up the tickets, the lady called him to ask why. He said he didn’t have any money. So, we had to go get on the phone to talk to the travel agency to get them to give him money so he could buy our tickets. They did it in the end, but we ended up wasting another hour of our time trying to get that sorted out.

5. We ended up having to pay for something once because they hadn’t gotten around to it yet and we were out of time. They promised to pay us back, but still have not done so. I’m doubting whether we will ever see the money again.

So, as you can see this company is a disaster. They are completely disorganized, they don’t follow through with their promises, and even have blatant lies on their website. When I told them about these issues the director’s response was basically that they are an economy option. If I want more, pay more.

After having gone to the islands, I realize I could have done everything they did fairly easily on my own. The only thing would be I wouldn’t want to wander around looking for hotels. I would probably just suggest getting a good guide book and making a list of just a few places you are interested in or booking from home.

In the next week, I will write a very thorough explanation of how to do everything on your own on my travel log and I will let you know when I do that.

I hope this helps others from having to experience the stress and frustration we went through.

Emily