We arrived at Finch Bay hotel, following an 80 minute speedboat crossing from San Cristobel. After a few "issues" with transfers on our 2 1/2 week trip, we were looking forward to a week of chilling and exploring - unfortunately, for the 3rd time Metropolitan Touring had messed up and did not make the correct arrangements for our arrival (we noticed a reviewer had also experienced problems with them recently).

When checking in our names was not on the day’s mandate, the receptionist’s grasp of English was fair at best, & she ended up calling the guest relations manager Carlos.

Carlos duly arrived and immediately tried to put us at ease in what was quite a stressful situation, he explained that as we had spent the week previous on a liveaboard boat they had sent a boat out the previous evening (New Years Eve) to the channel where they pass to pick us up. This is a usual process when liveaboard guests are staying an extra week on Santa Cruz, as it saves passing by and returning the next day by speedboat - we were highly embarrassed by this as we knew that getting a boat and captain would have been difficult on such a festive evening. We explained this optioned had been offered to us several weeks before, but we had declined as we wanted to spend New Year with new friends made on the boat - Metropolitan Touring had mis-communicated this to the hotel & was particularly inexcusable as they also own Finch Bay. Anyway, enough about Metropolitan..................

Carlos could not have been more gracious and assured us that the only priority was for us to relax and enjoy our stay with them

After a rocky start we were shown to our ocean view room which was clean, spacious and well furnished. The bathroom was modern with a lovely hot shower and bio-degradable products for you to use. The balcony over looked the small bay and included comfortable outdoor furnishings and a hammock to relax in. The bay is beautiful and quiet until the weekend when it is used by local families all of who are well-behaved and more importantly take all rubbish home with them afterwards.

Our only negative comment on the rooms are they are not soundproof and you can here most of what is happening and said in the room next to you. Fortunately, we only had neighbours for a couple of nights.

The hotel is centred around the pool and restaurant, with comfortable seating and sun loungers. The pool is a good size and frequented by resident ducks, herons and gulls which make it more interesting - the obvious downside is the mess they leave behind, but the hotel staff regularly cleans the pathways.

The pool was well used during our visit, our only complaint would be that some families showed no consideration for others by allowing their children to constantly jump and bomb the pool, sometimes for hours on end & also chase the wildlife! This tapered off during the end of our week when the families left and it felt like a different hotel. You cannot blame the hotel for the bad behaviour of guests, but if you want a quiet time go out of school holidays.

We used both the lunchtime bars snacks, which were very good value and tasty, and the hotel restaurant, where the food was well prepared and presented. A wine list was available and had a varied selection – however wine is not cheap in Galapagos expect to pay in excess of USD$30 plus tax a bottle.

Overall we really enjoyed the hotel, Carlos was exceptional and went out of his way to ensure his guests are having a good stay and when he discovered it was one of our birthdays, prepared a special candlelit dinner by the pool on our last evening, which was a really special end to our trip – thank you Carlos.

The staff are all friendly and wanted to ensure that you had a good time, however I would learn a few words of Spanish if I were to visit again as sometimes a simple conversation can be quite a challenge.

Access to the hotel is by water taxi, the hotel do have there own boat which is free, this can be waiting for you at the jetty if you inform the hotel reception when you are leaving the hotel, otherwise it is a cheap water taxi, & there are always plenty available

Things to do around the hotel include the Darwin Research Centre, Tortuga Bay and The Grietas, as well as snorkelling in the bay which has plenty of fishlife - we snorkelled with marine iguanas, eagle rays & cow nosed rays on one occasion. The hotel also puts on plenty of full day activities, however after a week of challenging diving on the Galapagos Sky liveaboard, our intention was to relax & recharge the batteries.

An excellent place to stay during a special trip in an amazing place.........thank you for making our stay so special

My husband and young son (17 mos) stayed at Finch Bay Eco Hotel after a 5-day cruise on the Legend in Dec 11. After 5 days being scheduled, we loved our unscheduled time at Finch Bay - very relaxing place. Basic info:
-No TV in rooms
-Internet connectivity is reliable and a decent bandwidth
Our room overlooked the beach, which is probably the best swimming beach close to town, and so attracts many locals. The rooms are spacious and nicely furnished. The stand-out feature of this hotel for us was the swimming pool. Our son was in it every day, and his eyes never hurt. Food was of a high standard, especially the breakfasts, and we never had to be concerned about sanitation. Even with a pram, we were able to get into town easily using the boardwalk and water taxi. Some nice local attractions (Las Grietas) are a short walk away from the hotel, and we also walked to Tortuga Bay (and to the exceptional lagoon behind it) with our son in a pram.
We did not take any tours from the hotel as we wanted to get around on our own. I would have to say that the hotel kind of goes to sleep during the day when most guests are out on tours. Service during those times was sometimes a little slow (stressful with a young child).
I would also second a previous review that suggested hair conditioner for the rooms. It took nearly a week for my hair to return to normal. We did look carefully but there was no conditioner available in our room.
I've heard many other travelers be surprised by the weather in the Galapagos, but we were still unprepared for how cool it was. December is a "transition" month, but the weather was only sunny one day while we were there. Long sleave tees are a must for travellers... some nights we were in fleeces!

We recently stayed at Finch Bay for 5 nights between Christmas and New Year. We thought this hotel offers good value compare to other hotels in Puerto Ayora, at least during the peak Christmas season. The hotel has a tasteful decor, great swimming pool and beautiful open air dining and lounging area. Our corner room on the second floor (#19) had a good view of both the ocean and the garden. The room is nice, spacious and clean. Our room rate came with buffet breakfast, which was fantastic in term of variety and taste. We dined in a few evenings and had excellent seafood dishes for very reasonable price ($15/dish). We also took a day tour to Plaza Sur Island through the hotel. The hotel is owned by Metropolitan Touring Company, which also runs daily tours from Puerto Ayora. You can join their tours even though you are not staying with them. This day tour was one of the best one we had (we took 3 day trips: Bartolome, Santa Fe, Plaza Sur from 3 different tour operators- suggestions on how to choose tour operators can be found on our separate,generic review of the Galapagos). Our naturalist, Franklin, was so knowledgeable, informative, cordial and friendly. The boat was nice, clean and the crews were just fabulous. We were spoiled!!! It might have cost more than other operators, but it was worth it. We highly recommend it.
A few fabulous activities that can be done near the hotel's vicinity are: hiking to Las Grietas (trail is quite challenging and treacherous, so wear good hiking shoes, but you can swim/snorkle at the quarry as the reward) and kayaking off the Finch Bay beach toward the direction of Las Grietas' wall. We did this after breakfast and saw so many wild life in the sky and in the water (blue-footed boobies, heron, white-tipped sharks, turtles, marine iguana) .
Our only suggestions for improvement are:
1. the operation of the front desk - the staff seems to be disorganized, aloof and not sure what's going on. Check-in process was slow and tentative (not just ours, but we observed others' as well). It seemed that they were surprised that people showed up and rooms weren't ready or they haven't assigned the rooms appropriately.
We wanted to borrow a kayak and had to wait for 15-20 minutes to get okay.
2. the operation of Finch Bay water taxi - you need to take a 2-minutes water taxi from Municipal Dock to the Finch Bay Dock. You could either pay 50cents per person one way for public water taxi or Finch Bay provided their own water taxi complimentary service for guests. We actually love the location because it's slightly removed from the town and the happenings, but yet, it's still conveniently close enough. The issue with Finch Bay water taxi is 8 out of 10 times we can't find their taxi, even though we have asked the front desk to page the water taxi and check their availability prior to leaving the hotel (about 5 minutes walk from hotel to the dock). In my opinion, it's either you provide the service and make sure it's always there or you just tell your guest that you'll have to pay for the public taxi. So we don't have to wait for 15-20 minutes and keep second guessing whether we should just call the public taxi. Or better yet, give the concessions to the public water taxi to take your guests for free.

We stayed in Finch Bay for 4 nights at the end of our Galapagos trip. We had a Gardenview room that was basic but good. Finch Bay has a very nice pool with terrace with a beach view to relax. Food an drinks in the hotel are of high quality and they have a lagre variety in menu's. Service was always very friendly. Connection to and from town is via hotel water taxi and walk via boardwalk to the hotel. We booked a package tour with two boat trips. Our day trips were on the yacht the Sea Lion to North Seymour Island and Plaza Island. A very comfortable yacht with plenty of space to move around and with very helpfull crew.