Last min cruise to the Galapagos
 

Hello!

I am planning a trip to the Galapagos in June of this year and I read that last minute bookings in Quito saves you thousands of dollars. Does anyone have any experience with this? Will we be able to find a cruise? Or is this peak time? What kind of flexibility should I plan? I pretty much have the month of June to go whenever but I wanted to see if I could make this a 2 week trip because it is quite pricey.

I also get sea sick sometimes so I was thinking of trying one of the larger ships. Any advice from fellow motion sickness sufferers as to what ship worked the best for them?

Thanks!

We did this a few years ago. Booked a cruise and award flights for June 3-4 weeks before our trip and saved thousands. Added 2 nights in Quito prior to the cruise and 2 night at Otavalo afterward. A WONDERFUL trip and zero seasickness for my son who has gotten nauseated on the Staten Island ferry (chose a large boat for this reason).

Here are the details (not a trip report - my comment on a previous Fodors post:
http://www.fodors.com/community/sout...p.cfm)...happy to answer more questions.

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I don't think it's necessary to plan years in advance. We arranged ours (for a family of four) less than a month before we went and still had a lot of choices. Agree that you should check availability first. We decided which size boat we wanted, saw what was available, then booked our flights (using miles).

We went in early June, which was ideal weatherwise. 2 nights Quito, 7 nights Galapagos Cruise, 2 nights Hacienda Cuzin near Otavalo (wonderful).

There were all sorts of bargains at the last minute and we were even upgraded a cabin class. We wanted a larger boat because we were concerned about my son getting seasick (turned out to be a non-issue because seas were calm).

We ended up on the Explorer II - It was not originally one of our top choices (I wanted more of an "expedition" ship) but the price was so reasonable that we couldn't turn it down - included all the islands plus lots of snorkeling on a seven-day itinerary...a fabulous trip. Our friends were on the awesome Lindblad at the same time - their itinerary was the same and they paid four times more than we did. They liked their trip, but had issues, probably because they had spent so much.

Here is the site we used to check availability - gets you directly in touch with the owners or reps of each boat who will also book internal flights (ours was an agency in San Diego, the U.S. rep for our boat)

http://www.galapagoscruiselinks.com/

And here is a site that describes every boat which I used for research but not for booking the trip:

http://www.discovergalapagos.com/Int...s_Cruise_Ships

Thank you for replying! Was the Explorer II a 100 passenger cruise or smaller? You went during early June which is my time frame as well so I hope the waters are as calm as it was for you. I usually only get seasick in extremely choppy water but I didn't want to chance it.

I take it you booked your cruise before you arrived in Quito? I saw posts about booking after landing in Quito but the posts were from a few years ago so I was wondering if that was still worth it or whether I should book now.

Can you give me an idea of the itinerary of your cruise as well? Thank you again!

<Was the Explorer II a 100 passenger cruise or smaller?>
Yes, it was 95 passengers (a terrific group, very international, not 'cruisey'). We were very happy with our choice, especially because we saved more than 50%, but I think any available boat would be fine. We were upgraded to better cabins after we boarded, so that was a fab added bonus.

< You went during early June which is my time frame as well so I hope the waters are as calm as it was for you.>
Waters were completely calm. Our landlubber son was a happy camper.

<I take it you booked your cruise before you arrived in Quito?>
We booked about 25 days in advance. After booking the cruise we were only able to get award tickets to Guayaquil but managed to change them to Quito about 2 weeks in advance. (Because of our schedules, we are used to planning big trips at the last minute, so we're used to living with uncertainty - check out my Africa or SE Asia reports...In fact I'm working on a mid-June trip to an unknown destination right now;)

<Can you give me an idea of the itinerary of your cruise as well?>
We were lucky to go before the rules changed, so we covered more of the islands than you now can in 7 days. I think we visited all except the most remote Genovese group.

We were in Quito for a couple of months (may and June) whilst taking some Spanish classes. We did flirt with the idea of taking a trip to Galapagos. We checked out a few of the agencies in Mariscal ( Ian pretty sure it would have been in June) and there was a lot of availability at substantially discounted prices as long as you could leave within a few days.

In the end we decide to do some other stuff but did meet another couple who did do a last minute island hopping trip and they had a terrific time.