Family Trips to the Galapagos
The Galapagos Islands are an amazing destination for anyone with a heart for exploration, especially active families! A family trip to the Galapagos can be a fantastic way to commemorate a special occasion, like an anniversary, or simply an exciting way to bring the family together for a fast-paced week of exploration and discovery.
Families come in all shapes and sizes, and the Galapagos Islands aren’t exactly a one-size-fits all kind of destination, so it’s important to make sure it’s a good match for your family.
Are Galapagos vacations good for kids?
The Galapagos are one of the most incredible places on the planet for children to experience a truly wild place of nature in a relative comfortable and safe way.
When determining if this is a good trip for your family take into consideration basic physical challenges, maturity, and attention span of your children.
Infants and Toddlers
Cruises require multiple strictly scheduled daily embarkations and disembarkations between boats, zodiac motorized rafts and land, including “wet landings” on beaches. Hikes can be long for those who recently learned to walk and they traverse sharp lava at times. So ask yourself if you’re able to safely navigate such situations carrying your young child. Many boats do not allow small children, and for those that do, the larger capacity ships like the Legend tend to have more facilities like play rooms for small kids.
If you are at all concerned about your infant or toddler on a cruise boat, a land based tour out of hotels enables more flexible activities and schedules that accommodating a family instead of the family needing to accommodate for the cruise.
Young Kids 5-12
The Galapagos are an absolutely amazing experience for any child that has even a remote interest in nature. An experience in the Galapagos is far beyond what an aquarium, zoo, or theme park could ever be, because it is real, it’s living, and kids feel and understand that in Galapagos. Fearless animals approach you, you spend your days exploring trails, beaches and oceans lead by a naturalist guide that explains how all of the pieces fit together.
For children in this age group, it’s a question of levels of basic maturity, behaviour, and courtesy, as you will be in relatively close quarters with other guests on the boat and children need to respect the rules of the National Park and safety procedures related with being on a boat.