Galapagos family adventure

We are back from our epic Galapagos and Ecuador family adventure! It is never low stress to travel internationally with 7 people, but we made it. I met my goal of having several enjoyable, memorable moments, so that is good.

We flew from Philadelphia to Miami, and then Miami to Quito (that is about a 4 hour flight and Quito is in the eastern time zone, so no jet lag!). We stayed at the NH Collection Quito Royal hotel for our first two nights, and it was quite nice. We had 3 rooms — part of the deal of being a larger family. This worked because we have, technically, three adults. My two older boys roomed together, I roomed with my daughter, and then my husband and the two little boys got a triple in each hotel.

Our first day we booked a private tour of the cloud forest near Quito. We made a stop at the equator, then the volcano near Quito. Then it was on through the cloud forest (full of bromeliads and the like) to a butterfly preserve, then to a cable car that took us over a valley. We hiked across the valley and back up. This resulted in a meltdown from a certain 6-year-old, meaning I carried him part of the way. Good thing my back is better these days! He recovered at lunch (where, crazy enough, we bumped into a young lady from our local high school and her family). Then we did a tour of a chocolate factory, then went to the day’s highlight: a hummingbird encounter. This was a place on a hillside where there were dozens of hummingbird feeders, so the place just buzzed with these little birds. My kids were entranced, which was good, because it was a 2 hour long trip back to Quito, with much of it on winding two lane roads stuck behind a slow moving truck.

Once back in Quito, we met up with our tour group. We booked a group tour to the Galapagos because it seemed easiest — and the tour operator (G Adventures) offered a family land-based Galapagos trip that allowed 6-year-olds to come. My little guy just turned 6 so this worked. There turned out to be another family with a 6-year-old and the two little ones played together a lot. The other family (there were 15 of us total on this trip, so my family represented a big portion!) had 3 kids quite close to my 10-year-old’s age.

The next morning we all flew from Quito to San Cristobal island (which is on Central Time). We had to wait in an epic line to pay our fee (in cash) to visit the Galapagos. Sadly, we were at the back of the line so the rest of the crew had to wait for us to get on the bus. But eventually, once through, we checked into our hotel (Blue Marlin) and then had lunch. Then we rented snorkeling equipment and took taxis to a nearby beach. Arriving at the water we quickly realized something about the Galapagos islands: there are sea lions everywhere! We shared the beach and water with them. It was a bit murky, rocky, and cold, so some of us didn’t last that long in the water but the sea lions were definitely entertaining on the beach. After, my family had dinner at a place called Post Office on the water — I’m happy to be able to eat outside in December!

The next day we took a boat to a nearby small island where we went hiking. There were tons more sea lions, colorful crabs, iguanas, and blue footed boobies. After about an hour hike, we got back on the boat and went snorkeling, seeing turtles and a ton of fish (again, my 6-year-old didn’t last long…the water was cold!). We then went to a nearby beach where the 12-and-under set built sandcastles until the boat took us back at noon.

We changed, had lunch, and then visited a local museum. It was fine, but the attraction was a loop path near it with views of the water. Things got a little hot and we were all a little thirsty by the end, but we survived, and then had a nice New Year’s Eve dinner after.

I wound up sleeping a lot that night — like I took a “nap” at 9:15 that lasted until midnight, at which point I got ready for bed, then slept on and off until 7. Why on and off? Because the town’s New Year’s Eve celebration was right outside our hotel. I mean it was loud. But somehow I was tired enough that I just slept and slept. I found out later that many members of my family didn’t really sleep. They stopped playing music at 5:30 a.m.

The next day we didn’t have to leave until 10:30, so at least people got to sleep in a bit. Then we took a speed boat to Santa Cruz island. This was a 2-hour bumpy trip — I took quite a bit of Dramamine before and did fine though I know at least one other passenger got pretty seasick (they gave us bags just in case…). We got to the island, took a bus to our hotel (Hotel Dejavu) and checked in. We got lunch on the main street through town, then met up with the group around 4 to go see the Galapagos tortoises.

We took a bus up into the highlands to Santa Rosa, and went to a ranch where the tortoises just roam around. This was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. The area was just so green, and there was a slight breeze that made the late afternoon/twilight air feel perfect. And while you have to stay a little ways from the tortoises, they move slowly and aren’t exactly threatening, or particularly scared of people, so this was about as close as one can come to large wildlife. It was amazing watching them lumber around the landscape, and stretch their heads to drink from a watering hole.

The next day was one of the more challenging ones, at least for me. We took taxis to the entrance to a park, and then hiked for an hour through the brush to the beach. It was quite hot and sunny and there wasn’t a lot of shade, and even though I kept trying to re-apply sunscreen on my kids, everyone got burned in the equatorial sun. Also, I hadn’t brought adequate snacks, so we were all hungry too. We had to be on the beach for 2-plus hours with no real way to leave until our kayaking reservation at 12:30. This was cool though — we paddled around the very calm waters and saw tons of sea turtles and then a whole slew of white tip reef sharks under our boats. (Yep, we were swimming with those sharks too…but they’re pretty docile.) We had the option to take a water taxi type boat back to town instead of hiking an hour back so…I took that option. We were able to chill after that (I read outside with a beer), and then we had another family dinner and ice cream.

The next morning we went to a tortoise breeding center where we saw baby tortoises. Then, after lunch, we took a boat to another part of Santa Cruz where we hiked to a whole nesting site for blue-footed boobies. I got to see a baby one, still with its fuzz. We went snorkeling and saw all kinds of fish (though again, the 6-year-old did not last long, so I got out of the water with him).

Then we basically had two days of travel, alas, to get home. The trip from Santa Cruz was quite a production. We took a bus for an hour to the ferry, then took the ferry across a channel, then took another bus to the airport. There we had the slight disaster of not getting the 6-year-old’s boarding pass (we weren’t the ones checking in and getting the passes because of it being a group tour), which we didn’t discover until we had gone through multiple lines of security and such. So, I headed back out with the little guy to get the situation resolved, during which I caved and bought him this stuffed sea lion he desperately wanted. He held that stuffed sea lion (name: Max) for two straight days of travel! Our flight was delayed though, so despite going through all the rigamarole twice we still made it through with a ton of time. The flight stopped in another city to refuel so despite leaving the hotel at 8 a.m. we didn’t get to our hotel in Quito (NH Collection again) until 7:20 p.m. that time. We had dinner and then went to bed as early as possible as our ride came at 3:30 a.m.! We had an early morning flight to Miami (featuring another passenger’s medical emergency that was fortunately kept under control until the paramedics met us in Miami- yikes – but they seemed to have the situation under control too when we left). Then we had 3 hours after customs (we went to TGIF…) until our flight to PHL.

So, not easy to get to/from remote islands to/from Philadelphia. But we made it. As with every trip, I figure out a few more hacks. For instance, this time we traveled with part of a suitcase filled with Quest protein cookies, and an entire Ziploc bag full of applesauce pouches. These sustained my highly selective eater when he refused to eat other food. We also have found that a lot of restaurants will just serve you an order of French fries, as long as that is a side for some other dish, so we ordered a lot of that. If a restaurant serves any sort of pasta dish, they can serve a kid plain pasta.

I read a lot of back issues of The Economist on plane flights. I traveled with four of them, two of which were long issues (the world ahead one, and the holiday double issue). Over my four days of traveling I just managed to finish all these.

I’ll be posting more pics on Instagram, so come visit me there! (lvanderkam). Also, please sign up for my Time Tracking Challenge next week — there’s a sign-up button on the home page of this site. I tracked my time traveling, which is how I can remember all this so well…