Tips when visiting Ecuador & the Galápagos Islands

Hello Readers,

I am back from my incredible holiday to Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands with a blog about top tips if you ever decide to see these fantastic islands (I would highly recommend it!)

First off if you want to know more about the Galápagos Islands themselves, then you could go and watch Sir David Attenborough's Galápagos documentary from 2012. He created a series of 3 main episodes including a fourth about how the series was filmed, covering the creation of the Islands alongside its inhabitants. My mum and I watched this before we went on our holiday so we could have some background on what we were seeing. We also both studied earth science and geology so this has always been an area we love, and David Attenborough is one of my mum's heroes.

At the time of writing, Ecuador is in a state of emergency due to some unfortunate situations in the country. However, it is still safe to visit both Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands without any adverse impacts to your time there. If you go with a travel agent, they can advise you further.

When we visited, we used Llama Travel who gave us an itinerary and helped us plan our wildlife holiday of a lifetime. The in-country guides were incredibly knowledgeable about local attractions and insights into their beautiful country.

Click the link below if you would like to find out more about what they offer:

https://www.llamatravel.com

They also used the Andean Travel Company for our travel arrangements in country:

https://andeantc.com/

For this blog, I am going to be splitting it into a section on Ecuador and a section on the Galápagos Islands.

Things to see and do in Ecuador

These are the top three things that I did on my holiday in Ecuador, researched and booked by my mum.

The Museo Intiñan

This was a really interesting museum, near the Mitad del Mundo monument and tourist attractions. My mum and I enjoyed walking around here, we received a guided tour that was included with the $5.00 entry fee. We got to take part in some scientific experiments around the Equator.

Fun fact: Ecuador has two monuments dedicated to being the latitude 00° 00' 00".

If you are travelling to Ecuador and want to find out more about the people who lived near the Equator and learn some scientific facts to baffle your friends and family with, I recommend visiting the Museo Intiñan and then walking around 5 minutes to El Mitad del Mundo.

You can find out more by following the Museum’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/museointinan

El Mitad Del Mundo

We visited this City at the Centre of the World after the Museo Intiñan, and I would recommend visiting both in the same order we did. This is more of a tourist attraction with restaurants, hotels, a church and a train to take you around the entire city. It also cost $5.00 to enter and we were lucky enough to witness some traditional dancing taking place in the central square while we visited. There is a monument that you can take a photo outside of. You can use the lift to go directly to the panoramic viewing space or you can walk around inside a mini museum with the history of Ecuador’s people, wildlife and legacy to the top.

Click the link below to find out more about El Mitad del Mundo: https://mitaddelmundo.gob.ec/

Also at both the Museo Intiñan and El Mitad del Mundo you can get your passport stamped to say you were at the Equator! I am a coin collector, so I had to get a coin embossed with the monument seen above on it.

Bellavista Cloud Forest

We stayed two days and one night in this incredible Cloud Forest Lodge. We saw some rare mammals like the tayra alongside a variety of hummingbirds, toucans, trogons and finches. The lodge provides accommodation and guided tours of the Cloud Forest, but there are also options to walk some of the trails on your own. They provide welly boots to walk in and walking sticks, to aid exploring the rainforest! It was an amazing experience, to support a sustainable ecotourism reserve dedicated to maintaining and caring for the environment and wildlife that live there.

One thing to note: the single-track road up to the Bellavista is quite bumpy and an adventure in itself!

To find out more click here: https://bellavistacloudforest.com/

How to explore the Galápagos Islands

If you are interested in visiting the Galápagos Islands while being mindful of your ecological footprint, then look no further than the Oniric Safari Cruises.

We were on the Treasure Catamaran and got to experience visiting around 6 different Galápagos Islands. Our guide was very knowledgeable and made sure we knew the rules surrounding taking photographs or being a safe distance from the wildlife. After all, only two of the islands are inhabited by people, the rest are wildlife sanctuaries!

We saw an amazing array of land and marine iguanas, blue footed boobies, giant land tortoises, sea turtles, fish, lava lizards and sea lions amongst other mammals and birds.

Our safari cruise took us across the islands of: