Guayaquil to Puerto Ayora. Saturday, 16 April, 2011

We rose, got into fresh clothes, and packed the clothes we’d been wearing on the flights into our luggage. We grabbed breakfast in the hotel restaurant, which had a buffet including cereals, fruits, and breads, plus a guy cooking eggs to order. It was pretty good. Then we checked out and met our first Intrepid representative of the trip, a guy named William, who would be helping us check in to our flight to the Galapagos at Guayaquil airport.

He took us to a car outside which had a driver in it, and as we drove back to the airport William gave us a briefing in good English of what we needed to do. Ecuador tightly controls entry into the Galapagos Islands, and there are a couple of formalities to be go through. Firstly, we needed US$100 each to be paid as an entry fee to the Galapagos National Park on landing. We knew about this already and had the cash on hand. Next, there is a form needed to be filled out with visitor details, which is attached to your passport on entry to the Galapagos and which is removed on departure (even though it’s a domestic flight within Ecuador). William said these forms cost US$10 each, and ones had been purchased for us through Intrepid as part of our tour package, but they had been lost in the post to Guayaquil, so he didn’t have them for us. He said he would get some new ones for us at the airport when we checked in. At least this is how we figured it out afterwards – it wasn’t entirely clear to us at this time.

At Guayaquil airport, William helped us with the check-in procedures, on a flight on the airline TAME. He spoke to a woman at a desk in Spanish for a while, and told us they couldn’t give us the forms here, and we’d need to pay US$10 on arrival in the Galapagos for them. It was good having him there to help us through the check-in, because we would have easily spent three times as long without him, and not had the confidence that we’d done everything properly. After completing the procedures for us, William said farewell and we passed through the security check into the departure lounge. We had a bit of time before departure, so used the free wi-fi to connect and send some e-mails to our parents letting them know where we were.
(more…)