S/Y Lady Jane
April 2019

We used Yacht Gala as our agent along with two other boats we were going to be travelling with. Javier was the quickest at responding and the emails were in good English.
He sent through a list of what we were able to take into the Galapagos and what was not allowed, although the list was not extensive nor very descriptive. When we asked for further explanations he was quick to respond.

We arrived in San Cristobal at 14.30 on a Friday afternoon, we had informed Yacht Gala of our ETA and upon arrival we messaged to say we were there. At about 15.30 Karina from Yacht Gala arrived on a water taxi and explained they thought we weren’t going to arrive until tomorrow so they couldn’t carry out clearance until the morning at 8am. She did take our fumigation certificate and our Zarpe from Panama so she could speed things up. This wasn’t a problem and we relaxed on board.
The next day 8am came and went and after a couple of emails exchanged with Javier ( quickly responded to), at 11am the posse of 9 people arrived in a water taxi. 2 from Parks, 2 medical, 1 police, 2 port authorities 1 from immigration and Karina from Yacht Gala. There had been a mix up with what time they should meet on the pier. Only the 2 parks, 1 medical person and 1 port authority person came down below, the others stayed in the cockpit.
Our very, very large Medical kit was inspected and mostly just glanced at as the young lady looked overwhelmed. Lots of questions asked by the Port Authorities/ about life jackets, flares, the engine . E.g what horse power was the engine? this was asked by 2 people, the answer was given and no one seemed to know the reason for asking the question.
We do not have a holding tank on board but we have a composting toilet, we were asked our capacity for our black water tank and decided that best not to explain about the composting toilet, we just said it could last 2/3 months, no one questioned this… we didn’t think they knew much about holding tanks, only that they needed to ask the question. The Parks lady looked in my fridge, freezer ( she will have seen the frozen meat ). Some of the other boats we met had their frozen meat confiscated. She looked at our obvious beer supplies but didn’t ask to see anything else, or ask if we had any items that we weren’t supposed to bring in. She asked if we had a certificate to prove we’d had the hull cleaned recently but we just showed her photographs of the boat on the rails at Balboa Yacht Club and she seemed satisfied. The diver was not available to come and check out our hull. We had placed all the required labels on the boat concerning garbage. Green bag for organic waste, blue for recycling and black for non recycling. We filled in immigration forms, our passports were stamped. We all went back on the water taxi so Karina ( our agent), who spoke good English could show us where the office was. She also took us to get SIM and internet top up cards. The office is also the place to leave your bags of rubbish. However, there is no separation of garbage here and it was taken away by a local taxi driver to just around the corner. It would seem it is all lumped together.
The garbage bins are coloured on San Cristobal but there are no signs telling tourists what the colours indicate, we only knew from a post on Noonsite. Karina told us that they send all their garbage to the mainland to be recycled. It all seemed to be going into the same bin truck when it was being collected.

Diesel here is $3.80 per US gallon for visitors. We dropped our empty diesel cans at the office in the morning and they were delivered back to the boat by 2pm the same day. Much better than carrying them ourselves. You can’t get diesel directly into your boat here. Whilst we were here a Belgium boat arrived ( on an emergency, no agent and no autographo ) they had run out of fuel and wanted to buy diesel. They went ashore and were advised that they had to pay €1000, be cleared in and only then could they have a certificate to allow them to buy fuel. They asked if we could sell them some and we said we could let them have 20 litres. We were told by Yacht Gala that we were not allowed to buy it for them, this was a serious offence and we could be in trouble with the port captain. We don’t know what happened but we saw them being taken from the boat by the coast guard the next day around 4pm and they didn’t return until after 10.30pm. They didn’t come for the 20 litres that we said they could have. So don’t expect to stop here and buy fuel without going through the process.

Yacht Gala people were very helpful and organised a taxi for us to go to the tortoise sanctuary, the volcano ( lake) and the beach . Cost was $60 with an hour at each place .

The water taxis are good here at $1 per person per ride but they tend to stop about 6.30-7pm. If you want one later then try and arrange for them to be available for you before you get off. Channel 14 for all water taxis in the Galapagos. We kept our dinghy on the davits here because there are so many sea lions, make sure you put things on your transom to discourage them. The locals use barbed wire or wood with nails in!

You need to give 24 hours notice to leave so they can arrange your Zarpe for the next island.

There are two lots of public toilets on the sea front. Take toilet paper.

Isabela

When you go to Isabela you will need to contact the agents representative ( Steven was ours) who came out within 20 minutes of our arrival. He brought a port officer with him who asked to see all the fire extinguishers onboard and took photos of them. We have no idea why.

The water taxis are $2 per ride, you can use your dinghy here because sea lions don’t tend to get in them but you still need defences on your boat transom. Be careful of the reefs here, a catamaran had put a whole in his keel the day before we arrived as he didn’t see the reef or realise the tide dropped by about 2 metres. The dinghy dock is not the best because you can’t tie up to the floating dock, this is purely for the tour boats to drop off and pick up, you also need to put out your dinghy anchor. Each time we went with our dinghy it seemed like the local boats were trying to make it more difficult for us to leave our dinghies here. They tend to bring their boats up into the sand here, scrape the bottoms and anti foul them, with all the old and new anti foul going straight into the water… there’s not much care taken with the environment by the local boat owners. One of the local boats on a mooring buoy seemed to be leaking diesel when we were there.

There are public toilets here ( and also in the town, near the beach) and also garbage disposal, we were told that they do not recycle here and this is because they are waiting for the election of a new Mayor who they hope will put recycling in place. We had to pay $10 pp ( for the duration of your stay) to use the toilets and leave our garbage. We only got asked to pay this on our 4th day. The taxis into town are $1 each and to the beginning of the walk towards the wall of Tears will cost $5 (total) .
When we left here we had to pay $20 for our Zarpe because it was a Saturday. It’s usually $10. This anchorage is lovely and calm, most of the time.

Santa Cruz
Next Stop was Santa Cruz, there are no inspections here but you still need to let the agent (Danny) know you have arrived. He speaks a little English, although he came with a colleague ( Gustavo) and he speaks very good English. They told us we couldn’t get dinner diesel here, but we asked if we could get some petrol for the outboard. The agent arranged to get 5 litres of petrol but they had to buy it for themselves as it’s not available for foreigners. Cost was $7. They seemed to think the reason was because it’s shipped in and they may not have enough for the locals if visitors are able to buy it. When we left here we had to pay $10 for the clearing in and $10 for clearing out.
This anchorage is very rolly and uncomfortable, it’s probably ok if you have a catamaran but on a monohull it can drive you mad! We didn’t put a stern anchor out because it was quite deep there and there were lots of boats. We saw one boat with a stern anchor out and that was a local sailing yacht. Reasonably good supermarket on the front and good fresh fruit and veg shops ( also butchers stalls) further in land. Taxis here cost $1.50 to go anywhere in the town. Water taxis are $0.80 pp during the day and $1 pp at night, they run 24/7 and are very reliable.
There is a boat that will collect your garbage from your vessel, just call ‘Garbage boat’ on channel 16, there is a charge depending on the amount of garbage. You can take your garbage to the town, there are clearly marked bins here for “recycling” and large bins opposite the supermarket. They seem to class recycling as anything, this includes plastic bags, tectra packs. The only things that seem to be non recycling is wet tissues. This is another reason why we didn’t thing they really recycled.

Public toilets (15 cents each ) are available opposite the pier.

We thought that the Galapagos was a very different place to visit and we actually liked the people, but it was not at all what we expected. If we’ve missed something then it may be on our website :www.untilthebuttermelts.com