Galapaguera de Cerro Colorado — Attraction in Parroquia El Progresso

A truly amazing place with lots of tortoises!

However, I did face one issue - having hired a bike and cycled all the way from the port I was told I wasn’t allowed to enter as I hadn’t bought a ticket from an agency in town. Obviously I was very upset by this as visiting this place was one of the core reasons I travelled from the UK to Galapagos. A guide called Mario Sanchez not only didn’t care at all, but was actively rude and nasty to both me and my girlfriend - saying it was now impossible for us to enter, lecturing us on how we shouldn’t take for granted that we can buy a ticket on arrival and telling us to go away. When I asked him why he was being so rude given how upset he could see we were he just shrugged and walked away. I really don’t understand why you would treat two visitors to your country in this way who had made a simple mistake.

Anyway, fortunately a taxi driver nearby saw us leaving and came over to resolve the situation by finding a different guide and offering to call an agency in town to book us on and pay the money later. This was despite Mario trying to intervene and stop him from helping by saying “it’s wrong to let people in if they haven’t bought a ticket in advance”. How nasty can you be as a person to act like this?

In the end we managed to get in thanks to the taxi driver, a lovely receptionist and an amazing guide called Milton - thank you all so much for standing...

Stopped here on our way over to the beach at Puerto Chino. So glad we did. Free entry. Made our way up to the breeding pens and only spotted a couple of adults from a distance. But on way back, ran into around 60 of these awesome creatures. Our taxi driver recommended around 30-40 mins to do the circuit, but if any of the tortoises are on the track then you just have to wait for them to move on (not very quickly). Tremendous experience. So glad we went here, especially after discovering the tortoise centre on Santa Cruz charges $10 entry, and by all accounts is a lesser attraction than this. Go here, if you don't get the opportunity to see these beasts...

Definitely worth a visit while on San Cristobal! The trail through the facility was very nice and pretty. It was cool to see and learn a little about the young tortoises. We went to the breeding centers on Isabela and Santa Cruz as well. This was the only one that was free and did not require a guide. While having a guide in the other places was nice to learn a little more information, we appreciated being able to walk through at our own pace. They do feedings on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings and I would definitely recommend going during one of those times. It was very cool to see all of the tortoises gathered together to get...