I just returned from a week cruise in the Galapagos aboard the yacht Angelito. To be helpful, I thought I'd share our experiences.
The Galapagos are fabulous. We swam with sea lions, saw orcas feeding, saw penguins, boobies, iguanas, albatross, topic birds and more.
Strengths of the Angelito included a great guide (Diego), very service oriented crew, excellent food including vegetarian choices, clean well maintained ship, adequate bunks, lots of snorkeling, free masks and fins. One problem was the rough seas on the long passages that had some passengers seasick, including my daughters.
The itinerary included Genovesa and Espanola which I gather is unusual so we saw both nesting blue footed boobies and waved albatrosses. We did not see Fernandina or Isabella, nor did we see the large tortoises in the wild (we did see them at Darwin Station). We were there at a time of year to see the albatross which was great. However, the mating season of the blue footed booby, when you can see the famous mating dance, is spring, so we missed that -- a trade-off.
I booked through a broker, Guide2Galapagos. I had anxiety about wiring all that money and receiving essentially nothing to guarantee the trip in return, but is was all fine in the end. However, G2G provided minimal assistance and I'd recommend booking directly with the owner, Cometa. They have a web page. When I contacted them, they seemed helpful and others on my yacht had used them and thought them excellent too.
Overall a great experience and I would recommend the Angelito to others.
