20240601 Celebrity Galapagos and Machu Picchu trip, Day #3 - From Quito to Baltra to Xpedition

Celebrity Xpedition Galapagos and Machu Picchu trip - We're in the Galapagos

A Galapagos land iguana

This morning was a low-key morning. We had to take our checked luggage down last night so we had only our carry-on items to deal with. We hit the buffet for breakfast and wound up talking for quite a while with some new friends we will be with through Macho Picchu. There was no rush as we really didn't need to be ready to go until around 11:30, so it was a nice, leisurely morning. Celebrity made sure that we were well-fed because after their supplied buffet breakfast, they opened up a snack buffet in the lobby, or as we like to call it, second breakfast. Since we were full, we didn't avail ourselves of the snacky goodness.

Promptly at 11:30, we boarded the bus and headed to the airport for our chartered flight to Baltra. 

Commercial air traffic generally only flies indirectly to Baltra. There is an interim stop somewhere and then the flight to Baltra. But Celebrity has worked out a charter with Avianca that goes directly from Quito to Baltra. Two hours, easy-peasy. We boarded the Airbus A320, hoping for a nice, comfortable plane.

Nope. The seats were extremely close, front-to-back, meaning that longer-legged folks like Arlona and me found ourselves sitting partially sideways, or with legs spread out and extending into the aisleway. At least it was only two hours. It was certainly sized for much shorter people.

Celebrity supplied a nice lunch during the flight along with soda, beer, or wine. Other than the seats, the flight was fine. Well, generally. We did encounter some pretty intense turbulence on takeoff and again when landing. Airflow around volcanic mountains is always unstable.

Our first glimpse of the Galapagos Islands

On the ground and walking to the terminal

Welcome to Galapagos

We wondered when we would see our first wildlife sighting. It happened while walking to the terminal.

There were multiple Galapagos land iguanas all around the terminal area - here are two - one small and one really big

The small one

The big one

We cleared immigration. Even though we remained in Ecuador, we had to clear immigration for Galapagos. They are very strict about what you can bring in, how folks can be here, and so on. The process was quick and in short order, we were waiting for a bus to transfer us to the the ferry station and pick up Zodiacs to get transported to the ship.

On the way to the dock, we spotted our first blue-footed boobies. It was all too fast to get photos from the bus, but there were bunches of them. We also saw lots of frigatebirds soaring. As soon as we reached the dock, we saw our first sea lions.

Snoozing under the dock stairs

We boarded the Zodiacs and headed to our home for the next week, the Celebrity Xpedition.

Approaching Xpedition

The Zodiac docking area was at the back of the ship. We climbed aboard and were greeted by the following folks.

Left - Hotel Manager, Right - Medical Officer, Center - our Captain

We headed to the room. We are in suite 505, one of the suites on deck 5. This ship has a maximum capacity of 48 passengers. This week, we will only have 31 on board.

Here is our room. You can see the desk - the one place in the room with a single 110V plug. Celebrity does plug in a five-port power strip so you have five plugs at the desk. There are none by the bed. You can also see the modestly sized TV just above the minibar. Arlona is standing in front of one of the two small closets.

The deck is narrow but fine

Here, you can see the bed and sofa

To the right of the small closet, there is a short hallway that leads to the second small closet with hanging space on the left and shelves on the right

Right next to that is the door to the small bathroom

There is limited counter space, but there is nice shelf space on the left and under the sink

The shower is a reasonable size

Once nicety is a glass bowl filled with puffs and cotton swabs

Each guest gets a small backpack with lip balm and a rain poncho - there is also a tube of approved sunscreen to share

The mini bar was stocked with two different beers, two bottles each of mineral water, Sprite, Coke Zero, and Coke

We also had a chilled bottle of champagne, macarons, and truffles waiting for us in the room.

A short time later, we had to report to the muster station for the mandatory muster drill. We returned to the room to unpack but were then called to the daily briefing where we were given the schedule of events for tomorrow and the options we had to choose from for activities. We have opted for a long walk in the morning, deep water snorkeling in the afternoon, and another walk after that. The walks are designed to expose us to different wildlife. Tomorrow will also determine our future snorkeling plans as the water here is in the 60s. They supply wetsuits, but...did I mention the 60s? We'll see how tomorrow goes. If we freeze, we'll likely stick to land excursions.

As I mentioned in the first blog for this trip, we were given reusable water bottles to use for this trip to help us stay hydrated. It turns out they are more valuable than that. there are hydration stations for filling them. That water is highly processed and pure for drinking. The water used in cooking, for washing foods, and in bars is the same. The water in our room, however, is not. They explained that it is fine for showering and even brushing our teeth, but they advised that we should not drink it. What? Don't drink the tap water on the ship? Nope. So, we will have to fill a water bottle each night so we have water to drink overnight and for brushing our teeth. Even though they said it was fine for that, if I can't drink it, I don't want it in my mouth at all.

After a nice dinner in the Darwin restaurant, we returned to the room so I could finish unpacking.

Our itinerary is the South Loop in the Galapagos. Here's a look at where we'll be each day.

We start tomorrow bright and early at 8:00 AM with a dry landing and a one-mile walk over rocky terrain, looking for various wildlife. Bed calls.