Succumbing to a Group Tour (for a Good Reason)
October 14th, 2009 Posted in Destination reports, General, Travel adventures, Travel industry
Long-term budget travelers are, by nature, and independent lot. You wouldn’t be out there backpacking around in the first place if you were trying to fit in and conform to the norm. “I don’t do group tours” is a common stance, spoken or unspoken.
I was just forced to be on a group tour for a week, however, and like many times this has happened I have to say I had a blast.
If you want to tour the Galapagos Islands in any depth, you pretty much have to be on a group tour. I was working for a site that runs travel tour reviews so it was a given, but also this is in many ways the most restricted national park in the world. To protect the fragile ecosystem, tourists only are allowed to touch down on .001 percent of the land mass and only a set number of ships are allowed to ply the waters. If you’re not on one of those, no blue-footed boobies for you.
The thing is, sometimes when you’re forced into this kind of situation you end up liking it. No decisions to make for a while, food just shows up without you trying to decipher a menu or even decide where to eat. There’s a guide to tell you what that creature is you’re looking at and he/she has ways to get you in front of the right creatures at the right time.
Unfortunately, some of these excursions are just plain out of the range of a backpacker anyway and there’s really no way around that. You either need to splurge or you need to wait until you’re on a vacation budget instead.
Most of the 14 passengers on my ship were as old or older than me. (The two that weren’t were both investment bankers from London who routinely work 10-hour days.) Two were judges from Holland. Others owned or had sold companies in England and Canada. They were well-traveled and some had actually backpacked in their younger days, but they saved this trip until they could really afford it.
Trying to do this any other way though is tough. Sure, you could get a flight out to the islands ($360 each), pay for your Galapagos park passes and ID card (another $110 each), get a hotel and meals in Puerto Aroyo while you look for a tour (both are expensive because of the distance from the mainland), and then haggle down some day trips or quickie overnight runs with a captain (still $150 to $200 each per day). In the end you’ve saved a bit of money, but not all that much really in percentage terms. Plus you’ve created a lot more layers of hassle.
If you put this trip off until you have saved up and can do it right, booking with an experienced company, it’s a far superior experience. You get great and plentiful food, an experienced guide who really knows his/her stuff, a comfy bed, and trips to further-flung islands with fewer tourists. Your group only shares the bay with turtles and sea lions instead of 200 other people.
The good news is, this is a golden time to go. In 2008 there were some 200,000 visitors to the Galapagos. This year the number will be more like 140,000. Everyone expects 2010 to be worse based on advanced bookings—maybe as low as 100,000 visitors. You don’t have to be an economist to know what that means: a buyer’s market.
Ignoring the ability to wheel and deal at the last minute though, current prices for booking with someone like G.A.P. Adventures right now will cost you more than $2,000 per person for a seven-night trip and the prices rise from there. (I was on assignment writing about Angermeyer Cruises, with prices from $3,000 to $3,700 each.) Is it worth it? Well, here’s a quick low-res slideshow…
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2 Responses to “Succumbing to a Group Tour (for a Good Reason)”
By Linda on Oct 17, 2009
I’m waiting for my mom to invite me along so I can do it right. I keep sending her articles about the Galapagos but so far it hasn’t worked.
By Carrie on Nov 21, 2009
Wow! Those pictures are somethin else! I would love to got to see those beauties of creation for real, I might look into going there myself! Many thanks for your article.