Back from Xpedition - Photos

We were on the Nov 26 sailing of the Xpedition. I finally got the pics posted to a Picasa album. I really tried to only post a few photos - I was able to pare it down to under 600!

You're welcome to take a look. It was a great trip!!

http://picasaweb.google.com/sloancat/GalapagosOnXpedition

Great job on the photo album Cathy! Your photos look just like ours :)

Wow! Galapagos is definitely on our "to do" list! Thanks so much for sharing your photos!

Thank you Thank you Thank you, for posting those pictures. They are wonderful. CAN'T wait to go.

Laura

Wow. Your pictures are amazing. I felt as if I were there. If you don't mind, I have some observations and some questions.

Quito looks so different than I imagined. It appears very well cared for. The hotel also looks wonderful. I was suprised to see palm trees in the city at 8,000 feet. I thought it would have been colder, even though it is on the equator.

I noticed you wore a shorty wet suit, is the water chilly? When snrokling, do you get to interact with any sealions, turtles, etc. or is that frowned upon. There seemed to always be about 10 to 13 people in your group. Do they split up the passengers into these groups?, and do they do it by age, ability, interest, etc.? or is it just random.

I noticed other boats in the background on some of your pictures. Were there other groups doing similar excursions along with the Xpedition goups? Did it ever feel crowded?

Is a scuba diving package offered?

Thanks for sharing.

David

Cathy,

Made me feel like I was back there again. What wonderful memories your pictures brought back. We called it a trip of a lifetime and 1 1/2 years later, still feel the same way. My wish is that everyone who wishes to go can do so!! Thanks for sharing

David -

Quito is a very old city. I think the people who live and work there have pride in their city - that was evident our last night there when people were celebrating the founding of Quito. When you go on the city tour, they talk about the different kinds of architecture in the city and the age. It certainly makes any place in the U.S. seem very young.

The hotel is wonderful. It was clean and modern, with all the amenities. It even has a hallway of shops with some very nice items. The buffet/restaurant downstairs (the breakfast place) offered a lot of native foods. If you're adventurous, you can certainly try new things! They also seem to favor chocolate breakfast cereal.

It was a little chilly in Quito, but really only on our last day there, when it was raining pretty good. It did rain a little while we were at the Equator monument. It was much warmer once we got to the Galapagos islands.

The shorty wet suit was just fine. We were there between the dry and rainy season, so I'm told the water was beginning to warm. I didn't even wear a wet suit on one of the beach snorkels, and it was just fine. One caution about the shorty - since I was wearing a wet suit, I forgot about sun screen. The back of my calves go sunburned, so I never forgot it again. They don't want you touching any of the animals in or out of the water. There were some lucky people who snorkeled with several penguins, turtles and sea lions. I saw a penguin and a couple of sea lions in the water with me, but they just zipped on by. One person had penguins climbing on her in the water - not much you can do to prevent that! It was the highlight of her trip.

You sign up the night before for the excursions you want to take the next day. It's a good idea to go to the nightly briefings. We always signed up for the high-intensity when they were available. The Head Naturalist uses the signup list to determine which guides will go on which excursion. He likes to mix them up a bit. The different excursions are staggered by about 15 minutes. When they announce your excursion, you get in the line to go downstairs to the marina area. We always tried to be last in line, as the zodiacs were filled up on a first-come-first-served basis. So, if there are only a handful of people left for an excursion after the first zodiacs were full, there were less people in the last zodiac. It worked out that way most of the time. When you get on a zodiac, you stay with that group of people and the Naturalist/Guide who is on your zodiac. Sometimes it's a group of 12, sometimes 8, and, once it was only 6. I didn't see more than one zodiac full of people for any of the advanced snorkels. I think a lot of people were hesitant to go on the advanced snorkels.

The Xpedition wasn't offering scuba diving, but they did set up one passenger/diver with another tour group, so she was able to dive. I think it worked out pretty well for her. If you want to go diving, be sure to tell the Head Naturalist (aka Cruise Director). They really do go out of their way for you.

I never felt crowded on the excursions. When there were multiple groups doing the same route (as dictated by the Nat Park Service), the groups went in different directions. We were told there are a total of 85 tour boats licensed to sail/tour in the Galapagos Islands. The boats range from 8 to a max of 100 passengers. There were 80 passengers on our sailing. Many times, we had two or three zodiacs from the Xpedition doing the same excursion, but we rarely saw each other. The exception to this is when all the groups meet back on the beach for snorkeling. Then you break away from your group and go back to the ship when you want.

About the ship itself - it was much nicer than I had anticipated. It felt like a new ship. I believe it was in drydock over the fall, where new carpets, etc were installed. The service is second to none.

I think I hit all the high points! Let me know if you have any other questions. Of course, all of this is my opinion, based on my own experience.

Cathy,

Made me feel like I was back there again. What wonderful memories your pictures brought back. We called it a trip of a lifetime and 1 1/2 years later, still feel the same way. My wish is that everyone who wishes to go can do so!! Thanks for sharing

Sheila- it was great, as promised. I appreciate all the stuff you posted about your trip. It was very helpful to me.

Cathy,

Your album is wonderful. I have probably checked out all pictures that have been posted on Cruise Critic pertaining to the Galapagos in the last year or so, and yours very well may be the best I have seen!

I am awaiting your answers to the questions posed by Larry, and if you do not mind, I would like to add a few of my own:

1. What type of underwater camera did you use? I recently purchased the Olympus Stylus 720SW, which is waterproof to 10 feet. I wanted a small digital that could also be used underwater. We are just now beginning to sort thru the pictures we took on our recent cruise, but my first impression is that the Olympus was a good choice for underwater "snapshots." We were also pleasantly surprised with the quality of the pictures it took above water.

2. One caption indicated that you used a Konica Minolta digital camera. Is that what you used for all your photos, with the exception of your underwater shots? Or did you have an underwater housing and use the same camera?

3. A bit of a followup to Larry's question on the shorty wet suits....I thought I had read on another thread that they have available both short and long suits. If they do in fact have the long suits, do you know if there were enough available so that anyone who wanted one was able to use one, or was the supply limited? My wife gets cold very easy, and we have heard the water is rather chilly in November. If the possibility exists that we might not be able to get one, I will just purchase one or two for us.

When will you be posting your movie file??:D

Thank you again, your album just made us a little more anxious to go!

Hal

Hal-

Thanks for the kind words! I used the Konika-Minolta on land. For underwater, I used the Pentax Optio w20. I bought the Pentax for this trip, and also looked at the Olympus. I liked them both, but chose the Pentax because of price. I do like the anti-shock feature on the Olympus. I guess you can drop it and bang it around and it will still work great. I think the underwater setting on the Pentax added a bluish hue - I removed the hue in Photoshop. I like the "real" color better. It was kind of hard to see the LCD screen underwater sometimes, so most of the time I just aimed and pressed the shutter. The waterproof Pentax also came in handy when it was raining. I took it on the Cormorant Point excursion, because we had a little rain that morning. While everyone else was covering up their cameras, I was taking photos!

We were there the end of November, and the water was fine with the shortys... and I get cold very easy. I understand the water is supposed to be even warmer in December. They did have long wetsuits onboard, but I don't know how many. Several people were wearing them. They set a day/time when the snorkel stuff and wet suits will be handed out. I suggest, if you want a long suit, that you get there early and try to be one of the first in line.

I didn't do any movies, except for a short one of a sea lion pup playing with a stick. There is an "awwww..." around every corner on this trip!

I strongly recommend that you get bonnets for snorkelling. they are not restrictive and do help keep the heat in. I had read the suggestion here and was glad we had purchased them. We sailed Nov12-19. the water was cool but we had one friend who did beach snorkels without a wet suit. the advanced snorkels were cooler than those from the beach. We purchased 5mm before leaving but will use them again. There was a very LIMITED quantity of XXL suits and 3 of the men in our group needed that size so all bought them for the trip. Everyone in our group are sailors/ or divers and felt that the suits would get used again.

WOW! Enjoyed the whole slide show. What an education. I had no idea the Galapagos were so diverse. Must of been like 10 vacations in one. Tortoise's from the Seychelles, Mangroves from Florida, Cactus from out west, Egrets from South Carolina, Flamingos from Kenya, etc, etc. What a treat!

Please tell me about the temperament of the iguanas? Were they mean and nasty or laid back? What kind of underwater camera did you use?

Thanks,

David

Your pictures look great. I hope to post my today under the thread I started 'Just Returned from Paradise'.

About the wetsuits - I went at the beginning of November and the water was cold. Even people from California were asking for long wetsuits. I guess it all depends on what the currents are doing when you get there. They did not have enough to go around on our cruise. My one regret was not bringing one of my suits from home.

I agree about the snorkeling bonnets! I bought one before we left, after reading about them here on CruiseCritic. In addition to helping with the temperature, it kept my hair from floating in front of my face.

David- The iguana were very laid back. They totally ignored us. They didn't even seem to mind when the sea lion pup thought it was fun to play with iguana tails. And, yes, it was like many vacations wrapped into one nice package! For the underwater shots, I used the Pentax Optiow20. It claims to be good for 5' under and 30 minutes. I didn't go deeper than 5', but I did use it longer than 30 minutes at a time. It took good shots on land (in the rain) as well.

Kelly- I'm looking forward to seeing your pics!

David - I think the maximum allowed is around 16 people per naturalist. The Xpedition always seems to have 6 naturalists on board and typically 75 - 90 passengers, so the average is 12 - 15 on an excursion. However, if only 4 people want to go on a particular excursion, it will be 1 naturalist for 4 people... you never go alone. As others have said... although you interact with the animals, you're not supposed to touch them... particularly the sea lion pups. If you do, their moms will notice a strange smell about them and may well abandon them to die... Seems cruel, but that's nature.

On our first excursion (N. Seymour Island) on Sunday afternoon I think most of the people on our cruise went on the high intensity excursion. We did run into 2 or 3 other groups and I did feel just a little crowded. But, the groups are usually headed in different directions so all of a sudden... poof... you were back to just your group. The only other time we saw a lot of people was on Bartolome where everyone seemed to be climbing the 358 steps (but who's counting) to the top. There's only one set of steps so you see everyone coming and going up and down.

Although the Xpedition had a fair number of long wet suits, they don't have enough for everyone. We were there a year ago in November. The shorties were fine. My watch indicated water temps ranging from 68 to 72 degrees F. I had a hood, which I wore one time and it made me feel a lot warmer. I would opt for a shorty and a hood over a long wet suit and no hood. Remember you lose 25% of your heat through your head. Also, it's a lot easier putting on/taking off a shorty than a long wet suit.

Cathy - your pics were great... reminded me of being there a year ago.

As Cathy said the iguanas are really laid back... a little like Cheech and Chong after ... well... nevermind...

One thing that really amazed me was that even though the islands are close together, they are all very different. Just because you've seen one, don't miss the next one! It's different!!!

Dave :)

Cathy,

 

 

3. A bit of a followup to Larry's question on the shorty wet suits....I thought I had read on another thread that they have available both short and long suits. If they do in fact have the long suits, do you know if there were enough available so that anyone who wanted one was able to use one, or was the supply limited? My wife gets cold very easy, and we have heard the water is rather chilly in November. If the possibility exists that we might not be able to get one, I will just purchase one or two for us.

Hal

Hal - we were on the Nov. 12-19 sailing & based on a recommendation from another forum, my DH & I bought 3mm full wetsuits to take with us. We both get cold quickly and were really glad that we had them .... we also brought neoprene bonnets, socks & gloves. The suits we bought were Henderson Hyperstretch & they were really easy to get on/off because of the amount of stretch in them. http://www.hendersonusa.com/product_hyperstretch.html#

Great pictures Cathy!! After seeing them, I definately want to go! :D You all looked like you were having the time of your lives!!

I just talked to Celebrity today about this cruise! Now I'm even more excited! Your pictures are wonderful...thank you for sharing! Can anyone tell me what types of activities they have on board?

We did this trip in 2005 -- it was so nice to see the places again and your pictures were wonderful. Thanks for sharing. Would love to go back again!

We were on the Nov 26 sailing of the Xpedition. I finally got the pics posted to a Picasa album. I really tried to only post a few photos - I was able to pare it down to under 600!

 

You're welcome to take a look. It was a great trip!!

 

http://picasaweb.google.com/sloancat/GalapagosOnXpedition

Thank you for sharing the pictures they were very comprehensive of your trip and gave a great feeling of what to expect. We are not going until 2/09 but cant wait.

Thanks again!