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Pre-cruise nights in the Galapagos?


MarLieb
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I am considering booking a Celebrity Flora Galapagos cruise for next summer. Celebrity offers a Quito extension for this cruise which includes pre-nights, flights to Baltra, etc., however, I'm a bit concerned about altitude sickness in Quito and would rather simply book the cruise. That means, we have to find our way to Baltra on our own. I'm not terribly concerned with that, however, if we go to Baltra on our own, I would want to get there at least one night prior to our cruise, which means finding a place to stay. It looks like there are some nice places in Santa Cruz, including a place called Finch Bay resort. How, logistically, difficult would this be? I understand it's a flight to Baltra and a ferry to Santa Cruz. Is this fairly simple to do? If we went to Santa Cruz, I would probably do 3 nights there. Would you see any issues taking the ferry back to Baltra the morning of our cruise? My other option would be to do one pre-night and one post-night in Guayaquil due to the flight schedule.

 

Thank you for your thoughts.

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  • 1 month later...

Just caught your post. We spent three nights in Santa Cruz before the tour and it was well worth it. There's plenty to do there that won't be covered on your cruise.. It's also tourist central, which means plenty of hotels, restaurants, and T-shirt shops.

 

We're experienced independent travelers and had no hassles. Keep in mind that Baltra flights are pricey and somewhat uncertain due to weather, so if you're not booking the whole shot with Celebrity, give yourself a cushion. Once in the Galapagos the on-the-ground logistics were actually somewhat of a mess. The Batra-Santa Cruz trip and vv is very doable with some planning, though on the tedious side. The real problem was with the cruise line. We were told to meet the Celebrity rep at the Baltra airport, but X really didn't seem to have it together and a bunch of us sat there for what seemed like forever, not being told what was what. Maybe because we didn't pay inflated prices for the Celebrity Ecuador extension, we didn't really count?  Eventually, though, we all made it to the boat and things went smoothly on the cruise. On the return leg, though, there was a scarcity of buses from the port to the airport, meaning long wait times for us all, independent flyers or no. YMMV, of course.

 

Quito, incidentally, is well worth visiting, Guayaquil less so and really hot.  But a few days on our own in Santa Cruz was wonderful. 

Edited by shepp
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