Patagonia Adventure

Planning a trip to Patagonia….

It seems that this blog has slowly become my platform for sharing tips, tricks and things you should know before you take a vacation.  This blog post won’t disappoint if that’s what you’re looking for.  Marc and I just returned from a two week trip to Chile – Patagonia and Santiago and I’ll give you a brief overview of what we did, include what I would/wouldn’t do again plus info you should know before you go.

We were up for some nature and so when our friends invited us to hike in Patagonia, it only took a few quick Google image to have us say “yes please!”  Then came the logistics – when, how long, which route, which travel company – oh, the joys of travel.  Our logistics: go in the spring/early summer so it’s a bit drier, warmer and there would be lovely flowers. We picked a modified eight-day circuit of Torres del Paine to “see it all” and get away from some of the W crowds (the “W” is the abbreviated or highlights hike of Torres del Paine – oddly, it’s not where our highlights were).  Finally, we picked Swoop Patagonia (a UK travel company), who picked Dittmar (a Chilean company run by expats), who contracted local guides and porters in the area. We made some good decisions and some bad ones, so you can definitely learn from our experiences.

We did some research and me being me, I made a bunch of spreadsheets outlining which travel companies went where, daily distance/hours, cost and what was included/excluded.  Tip #1 – it’s pretty hard to compare apples to apples based on the info online. Even trading emails with travel agents won’t get you apples to apples, it's only by laying out day by day agendas/distances/hours as well as total cost and details of what it includes/excludes you can actually see what pieces each company offers and get a fair comparison. It's a very worthwhile pain in the butt if you’re using any sort of travel company, especially if the cost matters to you.

This is our long awaited trip outline (thanks for the details! Spoiler alert, nearly all of the distances were incorrect)

Here’s a day by day of what we did:
Day -1 - Flew redeye from NYC to Chile

Day 0 – Transfer in Santiago to the bottom of Chile (Punta Arenas) and then took a bus to Puerto Natales. Rented some gear and then met our guide and a representative from Dittmar at our hotel, Big Bang Patagonia for pre-trip briefing. We receive a detailed outline of day 1 and high level outline of the rest of the trip. There was some confusion about the porters we hired and the weight they would carry – did it include or exclude the sleeping bags and sleeping pads we rented from Swoop/Dittmar. Final answer after much discussion (which started prior to our arrival for the record): Porters will carry 7.5kg of each person’s gear, exclusive of sleeping bag and pad.  Good news, because 7.5kg isn’t a whole lot for one week.

Day 1 - Our eight day trek started early Sunday with an 8:30am bus from Puerto Natales – it’s a two hour trek to the main entrance and it was warm, so we all napped.  Once there it was fairly chaotic in that there were a bunch of hikers and very little order.  Apparently it was time to line up and pay park entrance fees.  We got in line and were then pulled out as our guide and porters had already arranged our fees, which was pretty nice (the line was long and it was windy and sandy). The guide put us into a smaller minivan and we were driven to a camping area where we loaded up on supplies.  Here we learned that the 7.5kg of weight the porters would carry included the sleeping bags. Gulp! We looked around nervously and then our stuff was weighed – luckily we were all under. I still have no idea how much those sleeping bags weigh or why this was a difficult detail to convey. Oh well, relieved, we made lunch and set off.  We knew the day would be fairly easy from briefing the prior night. We set off on the Torres del Paine circuit and we walked counter clockwise.  Our slow and steady rhythm was punctuated with a glimpse of the crazy crazy crazy winds that you can expect that far south.  The hike was a great starter day, ~4.5 hours and ~7.5 miles (note that Dittmar said 16km/10 miles – the map was consistently incorrect). Camp Japones was pretty basic but was also basically ours which we came to appreciate later in the week when the campsites were crazy busy.  We had a chicken dinner which was scary since there was no soap/sponge to wash the dishes with, but was tasty.  Sundown is pretty late – around 10pm so we went to sleep in tents with eye masks on since the lingering sun made it very bright.

Camp Japones.... ummmm?

Day 1 Hiking distance: 7.33miles over 4:15 active hours (6:32 hours elapsed time).

Day 2 – I was feeling a bit nervous about Day 2, which was expected to be our longest and toughest day of the trip. We were told to expect about 12 hours of hiking including trekking up to the Oggioni Pass – a hike that apparently has major street cred (or mountain pass cred?).  We left around 6:30am (we woke up at 4:30am for 5am breakfast!) and started the long slog up to and across the Oggioni (sounds like Ooh-yo-nee) Pass. It was windy, crazy windy.  The kind of windy that made our guide teach us how to ‘hunker down’ during particularly bad gusts to avoid being knocked down the mountain. 

The terrain was pretty rough – mostly scree or otherwise medium sized stones like that of a riverbed.  The walk was slow and each step counted. Winds were pretty high with gusts up to 50 mph (though I’m taking the guides’ word on this) and there were a few times I thought I might blow right off the side of the mountain. We persevered and the whoops of delight by the porters at the top told us that this was a pretty big deal. It was a gorgeous view, but again, we had to stay low to keep from blowing away.

No joke terrain

Oggioni Pass - crazy windy AND cold -- brrrrrrr!

 As soon as we hit the peak and stopped moving we got very cold and seconds later couldn’t feel our fingers. The hard fought peak was not to be enjoyed for long. It was a relief to start heading down, but the scree made for tricky going.  The far side of the Pass was loose dirt and we semi-skied our way down it which again was a relief to me.  The rubble returned with the wind as we continued on and suddenly we were caught in a snow/hail storm which whipped at our faces.  We headed for a few shrubs growing on the mountain and mentally I lamented that we wouldn’t be able to take cover in them from the sudden storm.  Gabo, our lead guide, waded into the shrubs and disappeared. Greg followed. I was very confused – these were small shrubs, but not one to needlessly stand in the elements, I followed and suddenly I realized that because the side of the mountain was so steep, these were the tops of trees and after a few tricky steps, we were in a thicket.  The wonderment I felt as I looked back above and saw the snow and wind whipping around while in the thicket was remarkable - we were protected from both snow and wind! I was expecting Mr Tumnus the faun to walk by as though I’d stumbled into Narnia.  It was very cool.  Then the reality set in – we were going to bushwhack our way through the trees, shrubs, sticks and thicket.  I can see why a guide is required for off-roading – there was zero trail or sign of humans – we just stumbled and hacked our way through which was, of course, slow going.  We miraculously finished in 10 hours (though there’s no way we walked fast or faster than normal people walk.  Our distance was 8.66 instead of the 10 miles again projected by Dittmar.

but you get the idea

Not the Oggioni Pass thicket

When we arrived at refugio Dickson we were so pleased to not be hiking anymore and get to have a shower.  We were shown to our group room with bunk beds. It was heaven to sit and take off our boots.  We showered, played cards and had an excellent dinner.  The lodge was warm which was a welcome change from the night chill.  Unfortunately, the structure of the refugio meant that the top of our room was shared with the dining area, kitchen and other social areas so our friends found it pretty noisy and hard to sleep. I turned on a white noise app and slept like a log.
Day 2 Hiking distance: 8.66 miles over 7:39 active hours (8:46 hours elapsed time).

 Day 3 – The stress of the prior day meant that I slept amazingly for ~11 hours.  Day three was meant to be a much more relaxed day in terms of terrain, distance and hours.  We walked on a path which reminded me how much I love strolling through a giant forest with a great path so you don’t have to look down the whole time.  The path was flat and clear, so we could enjoy the views. 
We were speedy and finished almost 8 miles in just over 4 hours (the map/Dittmar showed 5.4m).  Arriving at Perros Camp we noticed more people than the prior two nights, but it still didn’t feel overly busy.  It was really buggy though so we retreated to the river bank for some relaxation in the sun.  The river provided fresh lovely water to drink and dip our feet into.  I found a lovely spot covered in some mossy ground cover and had a lovely nap – it was a glorious day.  We had dinner at the camp and then played some cards by the river.  As the sun went behind a mountain the temp dropped sharply and we headed to bed.
Day 3 Hiking distance: 7.72 miles over 4:13 active hours (5:05 hours elapsed time).

Day 4 – Waking in the camp meant it was chilly. We had a long day of walking – 22km (13.76m) projected so we rose early to get a start on it.  Perros camp had a proper shelter for eating, cooking and hanging out, so we enjoyed the shelter and planned for our day.  We had a new guide, Francisco, as our initial guide had a family emergency.  Francisco was very experienced and immediately impressed us by taking charge the night before as Gabo departed.  Breakfast was decent and we headed along the most beautiful stretch of our hike – the northern to western segment of the circuit. 

Despite the distance, the terrain was good for the most part and it was a rewarding hike.  The weather was good and in the morning we crossed the John Gardner Pass.  Our guide was very concerned about the weather on the pass, but we were extremely lucky and with good weather, the Pass wasn’t difficult at all.  Apparently the storms can pop up out of nowhere and can be very dangerous.  We passed Glacier los Perros and Glacier Olguin just getting to see gorgeous Lago Grey before arriving at refugio Grey which was wonderful. 

Warm beds welcomed us with endless hot water (Marc ran out of hot water at Dickson so we all took the quickest showers we could).  We washed out a few items and went to dinner at the rustic eating area.  It wasn’t 22km (17.8m) but we did hike 10.6m in 9.6 hours which was a long day. We slept well and enjoyed the use of a pillow which is quite the camping luxury!
Day 4 Hiking distance: 10.63 miles over 9:09 active hours (9:51 hours elapsed time).

Day 5 – Another terrific night of sleep at Grey found us in great spirits. We headed down for 8:30 breakfast but were a bit disappointed with the lack of protein and amount of food provided.  This day was medium in length and trekked along Lago Grey for most of the day which was pretty but not as varied as the day before. The goal was Campamiento Italiano but we needed to stop at Refugio Paine to resupply.  Our guide gave us the choice of camping there for the night or pushing on. 

We decided to push on as there were only 2.5 hours to the campsite and we’d been hiking for only 3 hours.  The day was scheduled to be 11.5m which is a good distance, and actually correct for once – it took us about 5.75 hours in total (it was nice terrain!).  The following day would include the French Valley and then end at Cuernos which would be a 7 hour day.  Our guide seemed disappointed we wanted to press on and we needed an extra porter to make the trip to Italiano with us.  We reached Italiano and it was a zoo of people.  We were fully into the W by this point and the campsite was crazy overcrowded.  The small shelter area for cooking was mobbed with people.  The bathroom situation at Italiano was also unfortunate and overcrowded.  The was the first time along the trek that I felt the park was being used as a ‘money maker’ and it seemed like people didn’t care about the experience that was being provided. It was a bit unfortunate, but we brushed it off.

Day 5 Hiking distance: 11.6 miles over 5:47 active hours (7:07 hours elapsed time).

Day 6 – Last full day of hiking was to be 7 hours or 16.5km (10.25m).  Marc and I went to the first lookout along the French Valley and decided to head to Refugio Cuernos instead of continue into the Valley just to backtrack.  We took our time and got to see a few avalanches. There were far more people crossing our path than any of the previous days though it wasn’t ever as busy as Kili. The French Valley was pretty, but having just hiked the other sides of each of the circuits, it didn’t seem like new views so we headed to the last Refugio excited for another shower.  We’d crossed into private property and unfortunately it was an unbelievably crowded, disastrously messy place that was pretty gross by anyone’s standards.  Our friends decided to camp, but we preferred the warmth of shelter and mattress even though the sheet appeared a bit dirty and there were four other people in our room (Dittmar and Swoop promised rooms up to 6 people but this one had eight).  It was very busy and the camping bathrooms weren’t working so the campers piled into the refugio bathrooms adding to the chaos. The poorly designed entrance ensured that people lined up to pay for campsites, beds, buy beer or talk to anyone and blocked off the entire entry way. Getting around was a challenge.  Early in the evening one of the three stalls ran out of toilet paper – by the time we left at 10am it still hadn’t been replaced.  Outside there were piles of garbage and the people cooking wore ratty slippers and looked like they hadn’t showed in days.  The food was pretty disappointing with everyone feeling like they didn’t get enough food – in the morning they served a whole table of people a small platter of eggs that was gone in a matter of moments – by the time I got to breakfast (10 min into the 40 min first session) there were no eggs to be had and most of the yogurt and other food was gone too.  It was a horrible experience. I couldn’t more strongly recommend not staying at this refugio.  Btw the prices were $USD 105 for that bed/food per person which was pretty high, but they have a monopoly, so there was nothing to be done about it.  Because of not going to the second lookout (more than an extra hour each way) we spent just under 5 hours hiking 6 miles, which meant that again, the distances were a bit off.
Day 6 Hiking distance: 6.0 miles over 4:49 active hours (6:07 hours elapsed time).

Day 7 – With the meager breakfast of Refugio Cuernos we set off on the last day. The hike was good – we had a few drawbridges which were a bit scary to cross, but the terrain was good and the weather was terrific.  We hiked for under 4 hour and covered 7.2 miles (scheduled to be 6.84 miles or 11km) and arrived at Hotel Los Torres, a pretty fancy rustic hotel at 12:30pm.  We felt triumphant and were excited for our two day kayak trip.  I was a little disappointed to be camping for the next two nights, but I was excited to see the glaciers up close. Our 1:00pm transfer didn’t arrive.  We decided to take the transfer to the bus depot 20 minutes down the road as some of our itinerary listed that as the transfer location.  Our porters and guides scouted both locations without luck. Unfortunately, neither location had cell service.  After ~3 hours, finally our guide, Francisco, took a transfer back to Hotel Los Torres and started calling Dittmar and Swoop but couldn’t reach either one.  After around 20 minutes of trying and calling around, he discovered that our kayak trip had been cancelled due to weather and Dittmar forgot to book our bus transfer.  He took the transfer back to us, now alone in the deserted bus depot and instructed us to return to Puerto Natales two hours away.  It was just before 5pm and we’d been waiting since 12:30pm.  Luckily for us there was a small mini-van there which we could hire.
Day 7 Hiking distance: 7.17 miles over 3:38 active hours (3:55 hours elapsed time).

As soon as we got cell service, I called the Swoop ‘emergency number’ and was greeted by a generic answering service.  I explained the situation and the operator tried without success to connect me with someone.  After ~10 minutes I lost service again.  Around 30 minutes later, I had service again and called Swoop and was told by the same operator that she was finally able to reach someone.  I was connected with Sally Dodge of Swoop and she told me they knew about our kayak trip getting cancelled since Thursday and they’d been trying to reach us or come up with alternative plans for us.  This was pretty shocking news.

Francisco wasn’t sure what to do with us, so we went to Kayak en Patagonia where our kayak trip had been booked.  Cristian, our kayak guide was extremely nervous as he’d expected to hear from us much earlier than 6:45pm when we finally arrived back in town.  He told us that he’d been trying to reach us since Thursday as it was possible to move up our kayak trip to be Saturday if we could walk faster and complete our hike on Friday night instead of Saturday morning.  It seemed reasonable to me, but I couldn’t understand why we hadn’t been given the option.  It turned out that Dittmar had chosen not to try to get in touch with us because kayaking wasn’t their responsibility (minus 1,000 points for non-existent customer service).  In the end, kayaking was cancelled and we booked a different larger boat to travel to the glaciers which would be better able to handle the wind.

The downside was not kayaking, but the upside was showers, beds and shelter from the insane winds the next two days. Not a great trade.

Total Hiking distance: 100kms or 60 miles. It's crazy to think you can drive 60 mph and it took us a week to walk that though the terrain was the key part of the challenge.

Miscellaneous tips:

• It takes a full day to get to the bottom of South America from NYC, and could be even longer from other places (someone from San Diego flew through NYC!) Make sure to take this travel time into account so you have a long enough vacation.
• All the tour companies contract with local guides and porters – honestly, I’d suggest cutting out the middle man and just going directly to the local guides, many of which own their own companies.
• Get into good shape prior to going. While most of the terrain isn’t tough, it’s several hours of hiking/walking each day.  There were a few days my knees felt creaky. I recommend hiking and if not hiking then treadmill and stair climber – don’t just go for quick walks and think you’ll be fine.  The better shape you’re in, the more you’ll enjoy your trip.
• Figure out what you’re going to rent vs buy beforehand.  While we rented gear on Kili no problem, apparently this isn’t nearly as easy to do in Patagonia. When we set out to find trekking poles, gaiters and waterproof pants, the lady working at Base Camp / Erratic Rock said, “it’s probably cheaper to buy poles than to rent them for a week” – this was a horrifying discovery. Thankfully we went to the next place - Yagen House and they had two pairs of gaiters, two pairs of poles and a few pairs of waterproof pants. It wasn’t nearly as cheap as Kili rentals, but it was cheaper than buying them.
• Bring a roll of toilet paper. While I thought the “fully supported trek” meant this would be included, it’s apparently not.
• It never hurts to have a few granola bars. If you have no food you’re at the mercy of the company you picked. It makes me feel comforted knowing I have food if the days sandwich is gross or dinner is much later than expected. We packed one per person per day and we did eat a few over the course of the week. Also the granola bars provided with lunch had zero protein and weren’t filling at all (Marc calls them candy instead of granola bars, you know the ones).
• An external battery is a smart choice. I'm a Garmin watch wearer and my watch needed to be recharged daily. While there was electricity in the refugios (leave your stuff plugged in at your own risk though) the campsites didn't have anywhere to plug in.  Your phone won't have service, so airplane mode will help you save that battery,
• Bring shower stuff – you can shower and you’ll definitely want flip flops or other shower shoes as it gets grimy in these very busy places. Pack an ultra-light travel towel that folds up to be a few ounces and you’ll be enjoying warm showers with the best of them.

Specific criticisms of Swoop Patagonia (I will share any responses from them here as well):

• According to Dittmar and numerous locals, Swoop isn’t local and therefore “doesn’t know what’s going on locally” and sometimes they “make promises that the local guides or Dittmar can’t keep.”  Having people undercutting each other and blaming each other when anything goes wrong was pretty unprofessional, but we also realized there was some truth to what everyone was saying.  Swoop didn’t have control of the situation.
• Pre-trip planning – we were never able to get a full breakout of costs from Swoop [specifically Harriet Pike and Luke Etherington].  After lots of discussion (see tip #1 above) our trip was quoted at over USD $3.2k each which is significantly higher than the prices advertised on the website.  When inquiring, Swoop noted that there had been significant devaluation of the Chilean Peso causing prices to increase.  They then offered a small discount of USD $200 each to get us closer to the website prices.  I looked up inflation in Chile as well as the Peso movement and couldn’t find anything to support these claims, so I responded to Swoop that 1) we were paying in USD and 2) I couldn’t find any evidence of their claims and again asked for a cost breakout.  Swoop responded quite exasperatedly saying that they didn’t have the time to spend on our trip or our many questions (though much of what they provided on the internet was incorrect and we had really only had a handful of emails).  At this point I would have pulled the plug, but my friends who were taking a longer trip to include hiking in Argentina still wanted to proceed.  Against my better judgment, I agreed. We let Swoop know we’d be proceeding and they did apologize for not being professional.
• Once we were all paid up my friends repeatedly asked for the detailed daily itinerary, but had to wait weeks for it (see criticism bullet #1, they were at the mercy of Dittmar who was still contracting guides and porters.  In fact, two of our porters only arrived in the country the week prior to our hike and were contracted a few days before we left – great prior planning!  When we got it I was surprised by the lack of detail and inconsistencies (e.g. notes to bring refugio vouchers but then not providing those vouchers as the guides handle them, or different schedules showing different meeting places, or instructions to go to Dittmar’s offices for bus tickets which they didn’t have – the documents made it feel like this was their first rodeo – not a comforting thought).
• Swoop told us they believed there would be a satellite phone on the trip. There was not. Dittmar told us they only have two satellite phones and both were in use during our trip, otherwise we would have had one.  This didn’t seem like a legitimate reason given you can rent these phones fairly inexpensively and several of the guides have their own for rent as part of the package they provide.
• We opted to have individual porters for an additional cost of USD $80 per person per day – they would carry 7.5 kilos of each person’s gear.  A simple question of “does this include our sleeping bag / sleeping mat or tent?” ended up being the equivalent of a final question on Jeopardy – very difficult and got different answers. This included our briefing the night before our trip when we were trying to finalize what to take – we were actually told, no, your 7.5kg is only your own stuff, the sleeping bag is separate. Guess what the porters told us in the morning? The 7.5kg must include your sleeping bag and sleeping mat. This gave us all minor panic attack as we waited to weigh our belongings. Would we have to jettison some fancy hiking gear or tie things to our day packs? Thankfully no, but this was unnecessarily stressful.
• We were told it’s no problem to have a vegetarian on our trip. In practice, this was not true.  Protein was only provided via meat – no quinoa, beans, tofu, etc. was provided. One meal had some lentils, but they were not prepared for a veggie lover.

Specific criticisms of Dittmar (I will share any responses from them here as well):

• Travel or camping 101 – have a tried and true packing list – use it and double check it every time.  Our supplies didn’t include soap or a sponge. The first night we had chicken which was raw and put in the bowls that we later ate out of. The entire trip was just rinsing our dishes instead of actually washing them. It was a bit gross – potential disastrous oversight #1.
• It may have been forgotten or just not included, but our tents didn’t have the section that goes underneath and keeps the tent dry from rain. It was fortunate that it hardly rained on our trip, but this could have been disastrous oversight #2.
• The Dittmar offices were disorderly and disgusting.  There was a sink with dishes piled so high there would be absolutely no way to actually wash them. There were rooms of gear that wasn’t folded or orderly, but in haphazard piles.  A food stockpile in the corner contained spilled over into several large fruits that had been cut open and were just sitting there with a few flies (by the way, the office was closed and one person was there doing paperwork).  Basically, it was a home with a chaotic collection of camping things and a white board detailing the ongoing trips – no wonder we were missing things!
• Same criticism above for Swoop on the vegetarian meals.
• In our “feedback discussion” with Laura McAfoos (co-owner of Dittmar with husband David Dittmar) we were told that ideally each group gets a satellite phone, but Dittmar only has two of these phones and they were in use by other groups.  Terrific. Should we get a discount for that?
• Dittmar wasn’t in enough communication with Swoop – the question on sleeping bags included/excluded in the 7.5kg of weight was never asked of Dittmar and was answered incorrectly by Julie of Dittmar at our 10pm pre-leave briefing.  In feedback discussion with Laura McAfoos we provided this feedback and were told “I don’t deal much with personal porters.”  Terrific, you’re customers do.
• During the same feedback discussion, we asked what the reason was that we didn’t receive the option to complete our hike earlier and go kayaking a day earlier.  Laura responded “The kayak trip is after the hike so it’s not my responsibility. My responsibility was the hike so I don’t know why people were contacting me about kayaking. I told them I don’t know anything about the kayak trip and I wasn’t the person to contact.”  This was pretty upsetting and we calmly responded, “while we were on the hike, only you and the Dittmar team knew how to contact us – we were under your care with guides and porters you hired – by not being responsive to Cristian about kayaking or even letting him know who our guides were (as Chino knew Cristian well) we weren’t given the opportunity to kayak which was unbelievably disappointing.”  She shrugged. Our disbelief was the only thing that helped us stay calm.
• The only area of “fault” Laura would accept was forgetting to book the transfer, which was something she was personally responsible for – the rest she shrugged off.  She told us she paid for the ride back to town – I asked how much and she told us $125 USD. A breakout she showed us charged us $50 each or $200 USD for our original transfer, so I suggested she refund us the $75 USD. She looked at me, shocked that I would suggest such a thing – “you want me to refund you the difference?” she asked wide-eyed, “yes, I think that’s what’s fair here since you charged us $200 and it came to $125 plus 4 hours of waiting.” “Ok” she said quietly. It was odd.

Wrap-up Thoughts

• This blog entry might come across as critical (I am). I really enjoyed our time in Patagonia. Do I wish we did certain things differently? Yes, I do. Would I recommend Patagonia to others? Yes, I have, would and will recommend it.  It was really beautiful and a good experience.  By having a good idea of what you’re getting into and having a good tour company/guide, I think this is a great adventure and definitely one worth having.

Happy to discuss your thoughts or questions on this trip!!

Thanks for reading,

Liz

So you're headed to Ecuador & The Galapagos? Have a read....

If you've read this blog, you know I love to travel. I think it's one of the best things someone can do for themselves other than staying in shape/eating well. I just returned from The Galapagos, and similar to Kili, there were a lot of things I found out there which weren't readily available in the articles on the Internet or guidebooks I read. Here's my findings and thoughts which I thought I'd share.

 
1) Cruise vs Day trips: There are two main ways to see the islands - cruise or land-based trip. This you'll find on every website and article. There are pros and cons to each way as with everything. We decided to do a land-based trip since Marc gets sea sick and one set of our friends had a bad experience on a cruise with lots of waves, bad weather, water coming in their room portholes, etc. Anyway, since some of you might be tempted to do both (shorter cruise with some land based stuff) it's worth mentioning here.

1a) Cruise caveat: If you are doing a shorter cruise, be very wary of what is offered, there are several "cruise tours" which offer very little since your arrival and departure day usually do not include tours. Hotels are very reasonable in Puerto Ayora and food is reasonable as well. This town is very safe and easy to navigate so I would argue you don't really need a tour to see Santa Cruz. Several locations like the Charles Darwin center, Tortuga Bay Beach, and Las Grietas do not have any fee to attend and are easy to visit on your own. Could you benefit from a guide giving you some info? Sure, but if you're doing lots of day tours (which is what I'm going to recommend below) you'll have lots of info on the islands and animals. Key take away - if your cruise goes to several islands that's a good sign, but if days in Puerto Ayora are included, it might not be worth the price -- proceed with caution and do the math (if you're price sensitive that is). I'd say hotels are $40-$80 a night and meals will vary - breakfast and lunch will be ~$5 each and dinners will be ~$20.

 2) Flights & Fees: It's pretty expensive to get to the Galapagos from Ecuador (via Quito or Guayaquil). From NYC I was able to get to Quito with one quick layover for $550 and it was $475 to get to Quito to Santa Cruz (Baltra airport). Yikes. Build that additional cost into your trip budget. Some longer/nicer cruises cover the flights (and that's why this is #2 vs #1) - be sure to check what's include and what isn't. Also, there's $100 and $10 per person in taxes and tourist charges. Finally, to get from the airport to Puerto Ayora, the taxi is $15-$20 each way.  Include those fees as well. If you were thinking Galapagos is a cheap trip (or is easy to get to!), you might want to reconsider and also build enough travel time into both ends of your trip to see what you want to see.  I did Friday to Sunday and it was tight to squeeze everything in.

 3) Hotels: Once you've got an idea or direction of travel you can start narrowing down what to do and where to stay. I will share what we did and you can take what you want from that. We originally thought we'd stay at Puerto Ayora for a few days and then move to Isabela and finally Floreana. When we arrived in Puerto Ayora we decided to scrap that plan and remain in Puerto Ayora and do day trips. There's a number of reasonable hotels in PA and we thought our week would be maximized with day trips rather than traveling with luggage, finding new hotels and ferries. Not all hotels include AC, which can be a must for some people. We used booking.com and found lots of options available.

4) Day tripping (if going that route): There is a lot to see in the Galapagos.  What you should spend time on will completely depend on what you value - animals, birds, scenery, activities, snorkling, diving, etc. We like to do a little bit of everything (except diving) so that's what we did.  I read that the further you are from the Galapagos the more you'll pay for your trip, so we planned only hotels (which we subsequently cancelled when we decided to remain on Puerto Ayora, thanks booking.com for free cancellations). What I found was this was true, but not exorbitantly so... more on that later by tour.  Most tours start around 7 or 8am and end around 5 or 6pm.

4a) Travel agencies: On our arrival day we walked all over the little town asking each Travel Agent what they were offering, when and at what price.  What we found is that several tours only go 1-2 times per week and others are offered daily.  My guidebooks and reading instructed me to find tours offering Level 2 or 3 guides, however, this did not prove differentiate anything as all companies claimed they had Level 2 guides. My best advice here is to map out what you want to see, find a Travel Agent who speaks good English and gives you the lowest price and book everything with that agency, insisting on a further "bulk" discount.  You have no guarantee that it will be good, but I'm here to tell you if you are doing day trips your quality of guide will likely vary daily (ours were phenomenal all the way to meh) and that won't matter where you book, because you'll be aggregated with everyone else from other agencies.  When everyone on your day trip compares what they paid, you'll feel better if you didn't overpay.

5) Islands: (in the order we did them not by priority)
5a) Santa Fe: This island is newly open to tourists.  We saw a gazillion sea lions AND we swam with them which was a trip highlight.  The numbers and colors of the fish could not be surpassed.
Review: Strongly recommend. This is in spite of a "meh" guide. There was so much to see that we thrilled with this trip.
Cost: you can do a 1/2 day trip for $35 or $45.  We did a 3/4 day for $60 which included more snorkeling (locations and time).

5b) Seymour Norte: This island is AWESOME.  It had countless baby sea lions playing when we arrived and lots of land iguanas as well.  This is known as bird paradise.  We saw lots of blue footed boobies and even more impressive, frigate birds.  Snorkeling was very good with many colorful fish and number of Galapagos and white-tipped sharks. This island has been heavily visited by tourists and as a result, you can only go one or two times a week.  Book this trip early as it can supposedly sell out.
Review: Strongly recommend.
Cost: We paid $150 each which included the trip there/back, lunch, snorkel stuff, and guided tour. Some people paid up to $180 if they'd booked it at other agencies.

5c) Bartolome: This island has beautiful views but is quite a trip for that view. We saw penguins too. Snorkeling was amazing in that I got to swim with a sea turtle (another major trip highlight) for ~30 days and I was in absolute wonder / amazement feeling like I was in Finding Nemo. Note this trip also can sell out and goes one/two times a week.  Like Seymour Norte, this is one of the oldest tourist sites, so there's a (very) small effort to limit tourists and the subsequent impact on the environment. I was highly annoyed with this tour because we were told it was at 6am and included breakfast, which we had on board a boat with 4 other people.  We then waited 90 minutes for another 15 people to arrive (note the crew did not speak English or tell us what was going on). This group of 15 had been told the tour started at 7am.  The total number of tourists ended up being 21 which made the boat a bit cramped.  We were then stopped by authorities who said there was a limit of 14 people and we had too many.  Somehow this was resolved (I imagine corruption?) and we were eventually on our way.
Review: Recommend if you want to see the view. Otherwise skip it.
Cost: We paid $160 - most expensive trip.  Others paid $180 or $200 if booked from the US.

5d) Santa Cruz: We stayed put and visited some of the island's attractions, Tortuga Bay Beach, and Las Grietas.  Both are free and easily accessible.  Las Grietas involves taking a water taxi from the main pier and walking for 20ish minutes (no taxi/bike ability available). It was pretty but extremely crowded.  Tortuga Bay was stunning.  The sand here is like flour and is incredible. It's a 30ish minute walk (cannot take a taxi or bike as the walk is on a path) from town so doing early/late is best to avoid the extremely hot weather during the peak of the day.  We did the Darwin Center after our 3/4 day tour to Santa Fe, also worth doing for 1-2 hours.  The rest of Santa Cruz we did on our way out of town.  We had a flight at 1:30pm so our tour agency set us up with a driver to take us to El Chato Tortoise Reserve, lava tunnels and Los Gemelos, which were all nice.
Review: Tortuga Bay Beach = Strongly recommend, Las Grietas = could take it or leave it, Darwin Center = recommend, El Chato = recommend, Los Gemelos = sure, why not
Cost = Free! Unless you get a guide to walk you around, then I'm not sure what you pay

 5e) Isabela: Options for Isabela are a single or multi-day tours.  A single day tour will take you to Puerto Villamil and on two days you can do the port plus Sierra Negra the oldest/highest volcano and second largest volcanic crater in the world. That latter trip involves a four hour hike in the insane heat, so we decided to pass and do a day trip.  Here's some things I wish I knew about that: 1) you're going to go to Isabela for the day, but lots of people go there for longer.  Your boat will be used to shlep these people taking the "ferry" and all their luggage will be on board.  It will be insanely crowded and is a long trip (2 hours).  People got physically sick on both directions. It was a trip-low light.  Arrival on the island was a hallelujah moment for our boat.  We saw flamingos, lots of penguins, tons of turtles and iguanas.  I spent a full hour swimming with sea turtles (a number of them this time) which was again incredible.
Review: Tricky one. The tour was good, but the ride was incredibly rough and packed.
Cost: We paid $80, but some people paid $100 or $120 (yikes).

 5f) Other Islands: There are great places to visit such as Floreana and San Cristobal which we didn't visit and therefore didn't describe it here-- those are likely very lovely places to visit and are worth checking out before you make your itinerary.

6) Quito: I would be remiss without mentioning my day and a half spent in Quito.  I was prepared for the worst since someone on one of my tours was robbed in front of many people, but if you take savvy traveler precautions, you'll be fine.  These precautions include not carrying a purse/bag, taking taxis at night and being aware of your surroundings. I felt pretty safe and I walked around all day Saturday on my own.  I took the free walking tour around old town which was beautiful and had great historical stories and lore.  I then jumped on the Quito hop-on-hop off bus tour to see broader Quito. I spent some time exploring La Basilica del Voto Nacional which is gorgeous and the 30 meter statue of the Virgin of Quito atop a hill in the city.  Definitely worth a day visit.

6a) Zazu: We had a phenomenal meal there at Zazu which featured a seven course tasting menu for $60 and a four course for $38. Each menu had different plates, so we ordered both. Unlike most places, this $60 and $38 was inclusive of tax and tip (22%) which made it even more of an incredible deal.  This food was exceptional and the price was also amazing. Service was terrific and nearby chatty patrons were also five stars. Can't recommend this place enough

I hope this has been helpful.  Please get in touch if you'd like any other specifics.

Till next time! Thanks for reading.

Liz