{"id":1627,"date":"2015-04-14T13:43:19","date_gmt":"2015-04-14T13:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldoftravelling.com\/blog\/?p=1627"},"modified":"2015-11-14T13:45:31","modified_gmt":"2015-11-14T13:45:31","slug":"galapagos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldoftravelling.com\/blog\/?p=1627","title":{"rendered":"Gal\u00e1pagos Islands – an introduction."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Gal\u00e1pagos Islands may just inspire you to think differently about the world. A trip to this extraordinary region is like visiting an alternate universe, some strange utopian colony organized by sea lions \u2013 the golden retrievers of the Gal\u00e1pagos \u2013 and arranged on principles of mutual cooperation. What\u2019s so extraordinary for visitors is the fearlessness of the islands\u2019 famous inhabitants. Blue-footed boobies, sea lions, and prehistoric land iguanas \u2013 all act as if humans are nothing more than slightly annoying paparazzi. Nowhere else can you engage in a staring contest with wild animals and lose! This is not the Bahamas and these aren’t typical tropical paradises; in fact, most of the islands are devoid of vegetation and some look more like the moon than Hawaii.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0Excerpt From: Lonely Planet South America.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Gal\u00e1pagos Islands were declared a national park in 1959. Organized tourism began in the 1960s and by the 1990s some 60,000 people visited annually. Today, around 150,000 people visit each year, which continues to place added stress on the islands\u2019 delicate ecology. Despite conservation efforts by organizations like the Galapagos Conservancy (www.galapagos.org<\/a>), the future of the islands remains unclear. Since 2007,\u00a0<\/span>Unesco<\/span>\u00a0has treated the World Heritage\u2013listed islands as being in danger.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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V<\/span>isiting the islands is not cheap, and the only way to truly\u00a0<\/span>\u2018<\/span>experience<\/span>\u2019<\/span>\u00a0their marvels<\/span>\u00a0is by taking a\u00a0<\/span>boat\u00a0<\/span>cruise. It i<\/span>s possible to visit four of the islands independently, but you are unlikely see the full spectrum of wildlife or the many smaller islands that you would aboard a cruise.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The four boat categories and price per day are roughly as follows: economy class (up to US$200), tourist class (US$200 to $300), first class (US$300 to $400), and luxury (from US$400).\u00a0<\/span>This<\/span>\u00a0figure\u00a0<\/span>does not include your airfare to and from the mainland or the US$110 park-entrance fee.\u00a0<\/span>Boat Tours from five to eight days are the most common. You can\u2019t really do the Gal\u00e1pagos Islands justice on a tour shorter than a week, although five days is acceptable. To visit the outlying islands of\u00a0<\/span>Isabela<\/span>\u00a0and Fernandina, a cruise of eight days or more is recommended. On the first day of a prearranged tour, you arrive from the main land by air at about noon, so this leaves only half a day in the Gal\u00e1pagos; on the last day, you have to be at the airport in the morning. Thus a \u2018five-day\u2019 tour gives only three full days in the islands.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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I decided to visit the islands independently <\/span>and\u00a0<\/span>accepted that I probably wouldn’t get to see everything. Looking back, I got to see pretty much everything that I wanted to see and for a fraction of the cost of going on an organised cruise.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Next stage: My independent itinerary in depth.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Gal\u00e1pagos Islands may just inspire you to think differently about the world. A trip to this extraordinary region is like visiting an alternate universe, some strange utopian colony organized by sea lions \u2013 the golden retrievers of the Gal\u00e1pagos … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-1627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecuador","tag-galapagos-islands"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldoftravelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldoftravelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldoftravelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldoftravelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldoftravelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1627"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/worldoftravelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1924,"href":"https:\/\/worldoftravelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1627\/revisions\/1924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldoftravelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldoftravelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldoftravelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}