Disabled Travellers to Galapagos: Know the Rules.

IN SHORT

I want to be very careful how I write this up, so if it gets too wordy, I'll take the heat for that. My aim is not to discourage any travellers from going to Galapagos, but rather to encourage disabled travellers to plan very carefully vis-a-vis the extraordinarily rigid park rules before going. (This is over-and-above any “typical” planning your own medical condition requires, picking individual cabins on individual ships, and so forth.) It boils down to the need to go on a larger ship and the need to consult with the cruise provider about naturalist-to-guest ratios and how those ratios affect activities on offer.

THE ISSUE

I didn't realize the problem before I got there. I lucked out because my expedition leader, Lynn Fowler, and her staff aboard NG Islander bent over backward to accommodate me and make sure I had a wonderful trip. I could have just as easily wound up on a different ship where even if the staff wanted to help me out, the rules and their numerology might have made this impossible. Allow me to explain. The two troublesome rules are as follows:

1) Each naturalist must closely supervise no more than 16 guests

2) No guest may ever be anything but closely supervised onshore, ever.

Consider what this means: Either the disabled group on each trip requires at least one dedicated naturalist, or the disabled people don't get ashore, or able-bodied travellers are limited to where the disabled people go ashore.

MOTIVATION

The Ecuadorean government's primary motivation to require close supervision of guests is not to give them a great experience; it's paranoia that the guests will try to steal wildlife. There have been cases where people have tried to stuff iguanas down their shorts or whatever for smuggling and resale. Very few cases, but I'll come back to that.

EXAMPLES

So here's something that's not allowed: Suppose you have 30 guests aboard, and two naturalists. 14 guests want a longer hike, so they go with one naturalist. 12 want a shorter walk in the other direction, so they go with the second naturalist. So far, so good. But the other four guests who want to sit placidly on the sandy landing site to wait while the hikers return are not allowed to do that, because they'd be unsupervised. The four either need to stay on the ship, or take a panga [Zodiac] ride if the ride is both permitted by the Park and on offer by the cruise.

Something else that's not allowed: There's a 400-stair boardwalk where the view from the top is pretty fantastic. If you start up the boardwalk but find the going too tough, you can't let the group carry on without you while you wait, unless a naturalist can leave the group and wait with you (this would be true of any walk/hike). You would need to be marched down and put back on a panga.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU GO

Make sure you go on a largish ship where the guest-to-naturalist ratio is well lower than the 16:1 mandated. I went on NG Islander, cap. 48 pax, with the standard complement being 4 naturalists. We were 42 guests so the 10.5:1 allowed Fowler to lay on a wonderful trip for me. If I had been the only disabled passenger on a ship with 10 guests and one naturalist, either I don't get off the ship or nobody goes hiking because the lone naturalist (and thus everyone else) would need to stay with me.

ECUADOR'S POLICY WILL HURT TOURISM IN THE END

As the population of the Western World ages, and ability levels spread further out the spectrum, it'll be increasingly difficult under these current rules to lay on trips that meet guests' needs. Each mobility group would need its own naturalists, or some people would be ship-bound.

THE POLICY IS OVERKILL ANYWAY

Lest I come across as not caring about wildlife, let me state clearly that I do. I don't want iguanas getting stolen. But these are rare occurrences that can be made rarer still by better checks at the airport (our airport screeners were very lackadaisical). Furthermore, any shopkeeper will tell you that there is an acceptable level of loss to theft and that cost is passed on to consumers--otherwise there would be no shops. Nobody wants to see iguanas/crabs/etc. stolen, so raise the park fee by $50/head and start an iguana breeding program to keep the numbers up and have better checks at the airport. 99.9% of visitors aren't coming as thieves anyway.

Two other points:

First, other park protocols were pretty poorly enforced. The overhead bins in our arriving plane were bugsprayed, but the luggage under the seat was not. We stepped on a disinfectant pad in our shoes at the airport, but of course nobody wore their hiking shoes at the time. While I had to disinfect walking boots before each landing in Antarctica to avoid carrying seeds/microbes from spot to spot, no such rule is present in Galapagos. Local Customs Agents (in and out) appeared to be working-to-rule. Sadly, they were very disinterested in terms of what we were taking in (“Any seeds Senor? No? Ok.”) and out (passports only, thanks) of Galapagos.

Secondly, the existing rules don't always provide the answers. One of our (able-bodied) passengers fell on lava, and crushed an infant iguana. Another mistakenly fell on a bird's nest while trying to avoid another, flying bird. These ladies felt awful st the damage they inadvertently caused and I felt awful for them. Any tourism in the Galapagos presents some small element of risk. Accidents happen.

IN SUMMARY

Galapagos is a magical place. It does provide natural barriers to the disabled traveller (be careful about your ship, know landings can be tough), and these regulatory barriers besides. If you go, work with your cruise provider in advance to make sure you get taken care of. I was very fortunate to get matters sorted on-the-fly, and I mustn't count on that the next time I go.

Thank you for this review. I have always wondered if I could do a tour there and I have expected that it would be difficult. How wonderful that you were able to do it!

I've looked into a trip to the Galapagos before and was told that it is not a good itinerery for disabled passengers. My wife has trouble walking and would need a wheelchair on shore as well as having trouble getting in and out of zodiaks.

Can you please comment on what your level of disability is and how that affected moving around?

I've looked into a trip to the Galapagos before and was told that it is not a good itinerery for disabled passengers. My wife has trouble walking and would need a wheelchair on shore as well as having trouble getting in and out of zodiaks.

Can you please comment on what your level of disability is and how that affected moving around?

Yes, I'm interested in this too. I've fancied the Galapagos but automatically wrote it off. I'm truly pleased that someone with a disability managed to enjoy a visit there.

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Thanks for the interest. Let me collect my thoughts and come back to this over the weekend. (I'm not always accurate, but I'm forever verbose...) In the mean time, I just got back from Antarctica and posted two reviews in the Lindblad forum. Here's the technical one for travellers with disabilities. (The other one's also near the top of that board.) It does detail my own condition:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1751600

I'm back. Apologies if this meanders. This is the best advice I can give to disabled travellers considering Galapagos and specifically NG Islander.

FOR PEOPLE WHO WALK SLOWLY OR WITH DIFFICULTY

Heed my initial post in this thread. Make sure you'll be on a ship with enough naturalists-to-guests so that a suitable programme can be laid on for you. But by all means go. I only got physically onshore three times, but even if I had been restricted to panga (Zodiac) rides for the whole trip, I would have seen almost all of the wildlife species the hikers saw. Not in the same numbers, but seen with ample time to observe regardless.

FOR PEOPLE WITH WHEELCHAIRS

I don't like people telling me I can't do stuff, so I'm not going to start telling people such a trip is undoable. What I will say is that I would imagine being a passenger in a wheelchair aboard NG Islander would be exceptionally difficult. What follows are the obstacles.

EMBARKATION/DISEMBARKATION

Absolutely everything is via panga (Zodiac). That includes your initial trip to the ship and your final goodbye from it. In both those cases there's a shabby staircase ashore. The airport buses that take you to and from the docks are old with steep stairs.

SHIP LAYOUT

My wife and I stayed in the least expensive cabins as that minimized my shipboard stairs travel (I go up stairs fine; coming down, I flop to the ground and go seated). There is no elevator. This meant being on the main floor, where the pangas are boarded for excursions and where the dining room is. The room size is adequate, but the bathroom is very tight. Complicating matters for wheelchair users, while room doorways are standard the hallways are quite tight, so one's turning radius would need to be very small.

Rooms/bathrooms on upper floors looked more spacious (I had a peek in) but with the same hallways, tight steep stairs, and no elevator, getting to and from upstairs rooms would be a major issue for people who don't move well. There are washrooms on the floor with the Lounge and internet station, but I found none on the main floor (with my room there, I wasn't looking).

The floor with the Lounge had wider hallways. The lounge area, directly above the dining room, is easy to get around but is on a raised platform (one step, 8-10 inches). Higher floors have spacious observation decks. Stairs are narrow and steep throughout.

I spent my shipboard time on the main floor, going up to the Lounge floor and observation decks for nightly drinks/recap and for any other special events.

The restaurant was spacious with nice views. The food was poor, but a trip to Galapagos isn't about the food. Everyone I talked to with special dietary needs seemed to have them met, if the overall quality was lacking. Breakfast and lunch and some dinners were buffet style. Served helped those who could not serve themselves. Half the time, dinner was served at the table.

ZODIAC BOARDING

A sturdy, fairly wide, reinforced aluminum platform is lowered from above and fastened to the hull. Five reasonable steps down from the main floor. From there, able bodied passengers step to the panga seat ring (roughly level with the platform bottom), onto a solid yellow box, and onto the panga floor. Sit, slide to the rear, next please. I slid into the panga on my arse, as I do everywhere I go. The calm seas in the Galapagos made this easy for me.

LANDINGS

“Wet” landings are actually usually easier than “dry” ones. Wet landings involve getting off the ship in shin-high water and slowly wading ashore. Dry landings involve marching off the panga's bow onto (possibly wet) wood or stone at the bottom of a primitive staircase, or onto the staircase itself. Most dry landings were beyond my ability.

THE NERVOUS MOMENT (well, for every panga passenger but me)

That afternoon's hike was graded as strenuous, so I had lots of company in the alternate activity—a panga ride along the coast. My regular companion (an 81-year-old gent newly diagnosed with sciatica who used a cane) and I were joined by a cluster of able bodied 60- and70-somethings who thought the hike would be a bridge too far.

Our panga started taking on water. The driver decided that if he drove it hard and fast, it would self-bail. That didn't work, only bringing in more water. There was no danger: we were only up to our ankles. Rather than take us back (and maybe risk water up to our calves?) he summoned the spare panga and its driver. The plan was explained: while the drivers grabbed the opposite panga's ropes to try to hold the pangas together on rolling seas, we were to slide from one to the other.

This was my moment to shine and I slid over before the explanation was complete. Many of the rest of the passengers, for whatever reason, grew fearful. As the drivers clung to the ropes on each other's pangas, the naturalist and I gently helped the rest drag themselves over. Once two passengers' nervous breathing subsided, the tour resumed.

OCEAN MOTION

The seas in the Galapagos are generally quite calm. NG Islander's twin hulls soak up most of the rest, and I never had trouble walking about the ship. We had some motion overnight one night on the run to San Cristobal, but I had no issues getting about.

AIRPORTS

Galapagos airports at Baltra (coming) and San Cristobal (going) are primitive. The terminal buildings aren't even enclosed, and it's stairs up-and-down and walk-the-runways to/from the planes (we were on modern Airbus 319s, AeroGal, excellent service). Wooden seating is ample. Security completely disinterested and surly.

On the mainland, Guayaquil's airport is of a modern, Western standard. Elevators everywhere, wide flat concourses, jetwalks. Staff knowledgeable and helpful. Quito's airport is a dump with few facilities, chaotic security checkpoints, buses to the planes and so on. That said, its replacement is imminent (was due in October 2012 and there are delays, now they're saying early 2013) and if the new digs are half as nice as Guayaquil's they'll be more than sufficient.

TOUR HOTELS

Hilton in Guayaquil and Quito. Highest standard of accessibility, excellent service. Much better than the Hilton I stayed at recently in Buenos Aires.