Fragata Galapagos Cruise

Good Experience

I was on a Fragata cruise in february. I liked it. We had a great guide, we were usually the first ones to be on the islands. The boat was good, everything worked well although we had some problems on our way (one broken leg and broken aggregator). Food was good and staff was humorous.

Tikku12, 25th March 2017

Our Review Of The Fragata Yacht

We recently returned from a trip to the mainland and the Galapagos. On the islands we took a 4 night cruise on the Fragata Yacht.

My wife and I were slightly put off right from the beginning by the $56 fee per person for not booking our flights with the yacht's company. On top of that, the nickle and diming tactic of charging for snorkeling gear and wet suits when those (at least the snorkeling gear) are pretty much essential to the experience, was very different from most of the other boats in their supposed quality level.

We arrived a day early so we returned to Baltra airport at the time we were told, 10:30am, for our tour only to be told that we would be waiting for people to fly in. We got started closer to 1. We were notified by the company the night before at what time we would need to be there. I'm certain by the night before they were well aware of the flight schedules of the people arriving the next morning. Our guild, Julio, proceeded to be quite rude to the last arriving guest who wanted to run to the bathroom, yelling at her that we were all waiting for her. The moment she rushed off, he turned to us and told us we would be waiting at least 15 minutes for the next bus to the harbor, which basically meant that he had yelled at the poor girl for no reason whatsoever. These were our first impressions of the boat and the company, and we had yet to set foot on the boat.

Boat: Once we arrived on the boat we were shown to our cabin, 6 which is on the upper floor, and were pleasantly surprised. It was clean, the bed was comfortable, and the bathroom was perfectly within reason for a boat. There were minor issues with stained pillowcases and whatnot, but I didn't make an issue of it and I think that they were clean, so it didn't really matter. As for the overall boat, it was in pretty good shape, the top deck was very nice, it's half covered by a sun shade, and was were I spent literally 3/4 of the time on the boat (I even slept up top one night because the stars were fantastic and the fresh air helped with my sea sickness). As for those of you who get sea sick: bring meds! It is to be expected on smaller boats that you can get sea sick and I would say around half of the guests were sea sick at some point or another, I was probably the worst off, but that is not the boat's fault. The quality of the boat was about where I expected for the price point, but I would not say it's a first class boat. The one thing I will say is everyone was very happy we were not on the sister ship the Golondrina as it looked much worse off than our boat.

Food: This was a big one. While there was usually almost enough, we ran out of more the half the items every meal time. We had only 12 people on the boat, but most of them were tiny girls. If we had more men and less women it would've been a serious problem, instead we just sorta made do with what we had, and everyone was polite and managed their portions. I would say that there was not a single meal where I had as much of what I wanted as I would have liked. The food quality was mixed. While the ingredients were decent, they were poorly prepared. Often the salads and fresh foods were over seasoned (as in salty) to the point of being inedible and the cooked fish, shrimp, and meats were all cooked like they were prepared half an hour or an hour early and left in an oven for the remainder of the time to keep them warm rendering them so overcooked as to be rather unenjoyable. It might sound like I'm a picky eater, but I'm really not. It was generally agreed on by the other members of the trip that the food was far too little and not well prepared.

The crew was friendly from the get go, although not a one of them spoke a word of English, which is generally fine, but if you're going to have a bartender on a yacht that caters to mostly English speaking clients, it might be nice if they speak a couple words in English... Overall we were really happy with our crew!

The guide: Julio started off poorly with his first impression, but he was very knowledgeable when pressed for information. The consensus from the people I spoke with on the cruise and my opinion, as well, was that he did the bare minimum a guide can do while still doing his job. He walked along the paths, pointed out the obvious animals, but really gave surface information. He ignored almost all plants, he ignored any birds that were not penguins, boobies, or the Galapagos hawk, which I understand are major players, but there are so many other birds on the islands. In the water he made a bit more effort and helped out one of the guests that had some fears and issues, which was very sweet. Overall he did recover from the first impression personality wise, but his lack of effort overall made it so we didn't even tip him in the end because we were that disappointed (which several other guests asked what to do, because they were torn over how little effort he put in).

The itinerary is the real reason we picked this tour. We had purchased our plane tickets before we arrived on the mainland so were looking for a tour within a certain time frame and this was the only itinerary that allowed us to get further away from Santa Cruz and do things that are not offered for free on the main island. It was a great itinerary, and we enjoyed that very much.

Snorkeling: This was the real highlight of this trip, we snorkeled often and the equipment was good enough. The zodiac would stick around close by giving a feeling of comfort to those who are not as good in the water/wanted to get out a bit earlier. My wife had hoped we would do more hiking, but I enjoyed the snorkeling and saw many more interesting things in the water than we often did on land.

Hikes: The hikes were all low stress, very easy. One involved going uphill for maybe an hour, but at a leisurely pace. Some of the ground around the volcanic areas can be quite uneven which could cause problems for much older people, or people with difficulties walking, but generally the boat's rocking would cause similar if not worse issues for people in those situations. Our group was fortunate that almost everyone was in very good shape and we could move at our desired pace, but it should be a consideration for elderly folks considering this trip.

Overall the islands are great and the wildlife viewing was amazing, but that has nothing to do with how good the boat was. While we were not upset with our tour for the money, we thought that all things considered we would try a different boat if we were to do things over again.

Marc N, 30th November 2016

Great Choice!

The Fragata was a great choice as we felt very well taken care by the extremely friendly crew and captain, the Galapagos Islands are truly a paradise for nature lovers.

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Victor, 23rd November 2016