Isabela Island

The other option is San Cristobal which is a smaller less populated island.

There is a third inhabited island you can stay on called Isabela Island.

The airport there only handles inter-island puddle jumper flights so you can't fly into Isabela Island from Quito.

Like I said, we only had four nights total and I knew enough to know that you have to take a ferry between islands if you're doing a land-based tour.

So I had kind of the advantage, our friends that live in Quito, they had been to the Galapagos before with their kids.

We got two rooms the night before our flight home out of Ecuador because our flight left at like 4.30 a.m., uh so it cost us like $400 for two rooms for a night but that was worth it to me and I wish we had done that the night before our Galapagos trip so that's one thing to know um oh yeah okay so here's what my schedule would have been if we had stayed longer here's my ideal um like one week itinerary for a land-based Galapagos tour You're going to need seven nights for this.

So you're going to fly into San Cristobal.

The reason being because there are no direct ferries from San Cristobal to Isabela Island.