Review of our Galapagos tour Part One
Bridges Galapagos tour.
First, a caution for Grandparent/grandparents traveling with a younger grandchild without the parents….do be sure that your grandchild is comfortable traveling without their parents….on the first day of our tour, a grandmother and nine year old decided to go home the next day, the child was missing his mom too much so the grandmother decided to take him home. He was shy, but that evening he was running around with our nine year old grandson and appeared to be settling. Too late, flights had been arranged, we were still in Quito, they did not even get to see the Galápagos Islands. That’s about $15,000 down the drain.
That left 35 people on the tour of a possible 40. The ship, Santa Cruz ll has a capacity of 90. More on that later.
My husband and I had been to the islands twice before with Tauck in about 2008 and 2018 on the Isabela ll. We loved it, so it seemed a good choice for our third Bridges Adventure to follow up after our African safari adventure two years ago.
It was a first time in Quito for us, the Isabela ll tour begins in Guayaquil.
Quito is at 9,200 ft. Our twelve year old granddaughter was immediately affected by headaches and did not feel well until we left Quito. I felt weird, my son in law was also affected. I had been most concerned about my husband because he had not coped once before, but he was fine.
We did not realize that to get to the islands, we first had to fly to Guayaquil, which meant we had to have our bags ready at 5am. We landed in Guayaquil, stayed on the plane and then continue on to Baltra. I question why this tour did not begin in Guayaquil, which is where our previous tours began, it would have saved that very early wake-up time.
We arrived a day early, flights generally arrive very late at night, the drive into the city takes almost an hour, so we did not get to our hotel until around 1-15am. The next day, our family took the funicular ride to the top of the mountain, we took in a local museum and walked around the area of the hotel and took in the local market.
The next day, we were taken to the outdoor Equator museum which was interesting and fun with some experiments for the children. Then on to the UNESCO colonial city which we really enjoyed. It was very very crowded all over. We walked around entering a particularly ornate church amongst other sites
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PART TWO
From the Welcome dinner onwards, we were kept in family groups, always being at our own tables for meals, the same tables through the ship part of the tour. When we did all get together, it was mainly for next day briefings or short lectures. It was really difficult to get to know other people, we literally never spoke to some of the other people on the tour, it was weird.
There were five teenage girls, a six year old girl, our twelve year old grandson and granddaughter and nine year old grandson. There were a few other kids not on the Tauck tour that our grandchildren hung out with in the short down times on the ship. Playing games, chess, cards and one of the Tauck teenagers played chess with our nine year old.
Apart from meals, the other non Tauck guests on the ship were mixed with others for trips to the island and so on. A mixture of people from different countries. We have never experienced that on other ship tours when there has been a mixture of guests, we have always been separate for tours, but not here.
The ship was very nice, great crew, group of naturalists. Every part of the operation was slick, things happened on time, everything was explained very well. When we had the briefings for the next day, they showed us little videos of where we would land, wet or dry landing, what the beaches and terrain would be like, best footwear to have…
We had a large cabin on the top deck 3, with a good sized sitting area and decent sized bathroom. We had read on our paperwork from Tauck that only shampoo and a bar of soap was provided and it was strongly encouraging we bring our own bar of soap…wrong——shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, bar soap, body lotion, all provided, very annoying to have brought all that stuff we did not need.
Our family had three rooms on the bottom deck 1, that is where the three person cabin was, so they were all near each other, much smaller room, comfortable, but the shower was very very small.
The rooms all had very nice innovative water bottles for us which were not the usual heavy metal Tauck water bottles, yay! Trouble is, the Tauck info had particularly suggested we bring a certain type brand of bottle which my husband and I had purchased, $14-99 each. We also were given baseball caps and a small bag with shoulder straps suitable for carrying things onto the islands on the pangas. A nice book on Galapagos was also gifted to us.
(Most days, the Children were given nice gifts from our tour director)
On two of the four nights on the ship, the sea was quite rough for several hours in the early morning. I felt quite queazy and quite a few people did not make it to breakfast for one of those days.
Most of the landings on the islands were ‘wet landings’ Several trips were just rides in the pangas around the islands.
To be honest, I was really disappointed by the tour. For months, I had been talking up about the blue footed boobies and marine iguanas and how they shoot out salt from their nostrils. Trouble was, we did not go to the islands that had them….which, having been before, I had been to…blue footed boobies right up to your feet and so many iguanas you had to be careful where you put your feet. Instead, we just saw the odd boobies on a cliff from the panga, never any on land. Same with the marine iguanas, a few small ones on cliffs, never saw any snorting out salt. Even the Sally Lightfoot crabs were ‘ thin on the ground’.
The only island we saw numerous birds, Nazca boobies, red footed boogies, a few frigate birds, was Genovesa. We never saw one single flightless cormorant. We always saw these on our two other visits.
Of course, the children knew no better. The ship Santa Cruise ll does the tour in three stages, so if you do the full tour, you see more islands, we got on the ship after part one, non Tauck people had been on the ship for several days, when we disembarked the ship, others stayed on for the final leg.
My advise would be to skip this Bridges tour, pay more and go on the regular Tauck tour of the Galapagos islands, as generally most people only go there once, so you really should have the opportunity to see everything.
Our family enjoyed what they saw and did, especially the snorkeling, paddle board and kayaking experiences. They did comment on the lack of encouraging to mix with the other families compared to our other two Bridges experiences.
In conclusion, we just did not spend enough time in Galapagos, at least six nights would have given more opportunity to see all the famous unique wildlife…which after all, is what you go to see.
Thank you for this detailed report. We had been with Tauck on the Silver Origin and are considering a Tauck Bridges trip to introduce them to the Galapagos. The Galapagos was our #1 trip and being on land and so close to the animals was the highlight.
We have not been on a Bridges trip. Do you think the lack of interaction with others was due to the fact that the trip was on a ship? I would think the fun for kids is meeting new friends and getting away from the adults!
I think it was partly the ship, but definitely it could have been better before we got on the ship. The previous two Bridges trips we took, our granddaughter in particular was in tears at the end of the trip and texted with the other kids after the tour. She is still in contact with at least one other girl.
I heard Tauck was avoiding Guayaquil because of all the drugs and crime...not sure if that is true or not.
I heard that but we ended the tour there and specifically asked about the safety. The hotel was way out of the center. I think the Santa Cruz ll partnership is fairly new, it’s part of the HK Cruise company. We noted Germans and British people on the boat for sure. We watched a football game with a very enthusiastic German man routing for England