What do I need to know regarding arrival and departure?

First a note about having a current Passport: Passports with a minimum of 6 months remaining before the expiration date are required for all arriving foreign nationals. If in doubt about visas, contact the Ecuadorian Consulate for specific requirements from your country. Click here to check important information about domestic flights from Mainland Ecuador to the Galapagos Islands.  Transfers between airport (Baltra/GPS) and vessel for same day arrivals & departures are included. Guides will depart Baltra airport at 12 noon. If you are arriving early and staying on Santa Cruz island or arriving from another island, please meet the Humboldt Explorer at the airport arrival area in Baltra at 11:30am.

If you miss any of your flights and are not able to make it to Ecuador or the Galapagos on schedule, please contact Galasam, our Ecuadorian partner, at 011-593-99703-1382 or 011-593-958720537. Notify them of your updated arrival time and where you may be reached in the meantime. The vessel will leave port on Monday at approximately 12 noon. Retrieving lost luggage after the vessel departs on charter is impossible. It can be retrieved when the vessel returns to port at the end of the charter.

Please note: If you decide to arrive in Galapagos in the days before the cruise and stay in a hotel in Puerto Ayora, there are two ways to meet our guides to go to the boat:

1: You can leave your hotel by 10 am and take taxi ($30 and 40 minutes) ,ferry ($1 pp and 10 minutes) and Lobito bus ($5 pp and 10 minutes) to Baltra Seymour airport. You can meet our guide in the arrivals area before 11:30 am.

2: We can send a taxi to pick you up at your Puerto Ayora hotel between 11:30 and 11:45 am. Each taxi costs $30 and can be shared by up to 4 people. The drive across the island takes about 40 minutes, directly to meet the zodiacs to go the boat.

The vessel arrives at its final destination port on Monday morning. The Sunday evening meal is on the island and is not included in the price of the trip. Transportation is organized and included for transfer to the airport. The departure tax from Quito and Guayaquil is now included in international flight prices. Please note: Flight times, prices and the Galapagos airport of arrival are all subject to change with little or no notification, and flights often run late. We strongly encourage our guests to plan on arriving at least one and preferably two days prior to your flight to the Galapagos Islands, to ensure that your luggage is with you or to make up for any travel delays. We also recommend that guests plan on an extra night in Quito or Guayaquil before departing Ecuador. The earliest time a guest can reliably expect to connect to another flight is 5 pm on the last Saturday of the trip from Guayaquil or 7 pm from Quito. Ticket holders are required to check-in a minimum of three hours prior to flight time for all international departures. If you are booking your own domestic flights, the Humboldt Explorer departs from Baltra (GPS), not San Cristobal. Passengers flying into San Cristobal must arrange their own transportation to Baltra.