Special Galápagos Cruises

crested heron. Photo by Crit Minster.

Tour boat companies—in conjunction with private agencies—sometimes offer special tours for families, scuba-divers, photographers, students, and scientists. Most of the time, these tours are coordinated by private organizations, which charter a boat to meet their special needs, and thus are not available to individual tourists. This mostly applies to photographic, student, or research expeditions. If you have a special interest in Galápagos that cannot be stimulated within the realm of the general tour your best option is to organize a charter (six months to a year in advance) with others that have the same interest.

Family tours are not uncommon in the Galápagos. A few boats—especially the bigger cruise ships—will have special family promotions in order to attract (and concentrate) younger visitors. Although the Galápagos vacation is more meaningful for visitors who can understand the evolutionary dynamics of island biogeography, students of all ages, young and old, can learn important lessons from their Galápagos tour. If you want to bring young children, it is worth your while to look for a family tour: other families will be present with playmates for your children, and your guides will have some experience with younger visitors.

Extreme diving aficionados also have the option of booking a live-aboard scuba tour to the outlying islands of Darwin and Wolf. These trips organize two to three daily immersions in some of the archipelago's most amazing (and remote) dive sites along the route. Live-aboard scuba-diving tours in the Galápagos do not incorporate on-land excursions, instead focusing 100% on cultivating the marine experience. You will, however, get interesting views of rarer island sites while you are navigating.

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