Ecuador Galapagos & Amazon Adventure Tour

Welcome to the historic city of Quito, the capital of Ecuador. An MT Sobek representative will meet you outside customs at the airport and escort you to your hotel. After settling in at the hotel, the rest of the evening is free to unwind and take advantage of the pool and onsite restaurant. Dinner is on your own tonight.

After breakfast, depart for a full-day tour to Mindo, a village in the Andean Mountains that's known for its many bird and butterfly species. Visit a cacao farm and factory and learn how chocolate is made, from harvesting the plants to the final product. Enjoy a welcome lunch surrounded by an incredible diversity of hummingbirds. Return to Quito in the afternoon for an introductory talk and orientation about your trip. In the evening, explore Quito and have dinner on your own.

After breakfast, transfer to Quito airport for a short flight to Coca airport, located on the Amazon side of the Andes. From there, take a two-hour motorized boat ride along the Napo River, then transfer by canoe to your lakeside lodge, looking for monkeys, sloths, and other wildlife. Settle into comfortable jungle-view rooms, your home for the next few days.

Spend the day exploring the pristine rainforest around the lodge, home to an amazing variety of wildlife. Watch for roving bands of monkeys, hundreds of species of birds, and the occasional anteater, three-toed sloth, or ocelot. Giant otters also make their home in the lake alongside the lodge and can often be spotted playing and fishing. Go for a ride in a dugout canoe, fish for piranhas, and birdwatch from the top of a canopy tower. You can also go on a night walk to look for frogs, spiders, and other nocturnal critters.

Enjoy another full day of activities around your lodge. Rise early and cruise along the river to visit one of the parrot clay licks, with the possibility of spotting five species, including parrots, parakeets, and macaws. Hike into the rainforest to visit a project run by and benefiting the women of a local indigenous community. Learn about how they live, the food they eat, and their culture. In the afternoon, walk trails or canoe canals for encounters with a diverse range of birds and mammal species. In the evening, take an optional night canoe ride to look for caimans, snakes, and other nocturnal wildlife.

After breakfast, depart your lodge and take a return boat ride to Coca. Then, board your flight back to Quito and transfer to the hotel. The rest of the day is free to relax at the swimming pool or visit the Old Town on your own.

After breakfast, fly from Quito to San Cristobal in the Galapagos Islands. On arrival your guide will escort you to Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, where you will board the deluxe EcoGalaxy. Enjoy lunch before cruising to nearby Isla Lobos — separated from San Cristobal by a narrow channel, providing opportunities to snorkel with sea lions, sea turtles, and tropical fish. There is also a short trail great for viewing blue-footed boobies, frigatebirds, sea lions, and the picturesque Leon Dormido — a huge volcanic monolith located offshore.

Walk along a magnificent coral sand beach at Gardner Bay. Here, sea lions bask, marine turtles nest, and the curious Española mockingbirds follow your every footstep. Take a brief swim on the beach or snorkel in the company of schools of angelfish, parrotfish, damselfish, and surgeonfish, turtles, sea lions, and possibly small sharks along the underwater cliffs of Gardner, a small satellite islet. Española is the only island where you can see waved albatrosses and possibly observe their fascinating mating dance (seasonally from April to December), and is also a good place to spot the Galapagos hawk and stroll amid large colonies of Nazca and blue-footed boobies and swallow-tailed gulls. After lunch, experience the incredible birdlife at Punta Suarez, where you'll get spectacular cliff views of pounding surf and seemingly unlimited populations of seabirds. Brightly-colored marine iguanas and the largest lava lizards in the Galapagos rest on the trail. From the cliff top, watch a blowhole spray water up to 100 feet in the air.

Venture ashore at Floreana Island's historic Post Office Bay, where a wooden barrel has served as an informal post office in the archipelago since the 18th century. If you wish, send postcards to your friends and relatives or pick up mail to deliver in your home town! Enjoy time to relax on the beach, or snorkel to look for fish and rays, and watch sea turtles feeding on algae. This afternoon, venture ashore at Punta Cormorant's green-tinged beach and set out on foot to observe the flamingos and other water birds that frequent the lagoon and see the white-sand Flour Beach where sea turtles come out at night to nest. At nearby Devil's Crown, snorkel amid spectacular marine life including huge schools of snapper, parrotfish, angelfish, reef sharks, sea turtles, and rays. All gather to feed on the plentiful plankton that are funneled by the current to the foot of this heavily eroded small volcano.

Wake to explore the beautiful bay and turquoise waters of Santa Fe Island. After a wet landing on a white beach usually covered with sea lions, walk into a giant Opuntia cactus grove in search of endemic land iguanas and possibly Galapagos Hawks. Afterwards, you can snorkel and/or kayak in the turquoise waters of the bay, full of sea lions, sea turtles, rays, urchins, eels, and very colorful fish, including large schools of surgeonfish and parrotfish. Next it's on to South Plaza Island for an afternoon walk. Both North and South Plazas were formed by geological uplift and tilt to the north, with cliffs on their southern coasts. On small islands like this, terrestrial and marine species interact more than on the larger islands, and the occasional hybrid iguana (land and marine) with its "zebra-like" stripes can often be observed. The south facing cliffs swarm with a myriad of bird species, including tropicbirds, pelicans, boobies, Galapagos shearwaters, and swallow-tailed gulls. Bachelor sea lions climb steep cliffs in the late afternoon to spend nights away from the larger dominant bulls. Look for endemic land iguanas under the prickly-pear cactus. Back on the boat tonight, enjoy a festive farewell cocktail hour and a group dinner with the captain.

After an early breakfast, disembark the EcoGalaxy and transfer to the lush highlands of Santa Cruz Island for a special opportunity to see Galapagos giant tortoises in the wild. Then head to the Baltra airport for your return flight to Quito. An MT Sobek representative will greet you at Quito airport and provide assistance to your nearby hotel. Lunch and dinner are on your own today.

After breakfast, use the complimentary shuttle to transfer to the airport in time for your outbound flight, or opt to stay on in Quito to join us for one of our extensions in Ecuador or Peru!