I Took My Opinionated 9-Year-Old to the Galapagos. She Had Notes (Literally)

A man, a woman, and a child report on their trip to Ecuador.

There are responsibilities that come with being the travel partner of a travel writer. For my husband and nine-year-old daughter, that meant they got to go to the Galapagos only if they kept copious travel journals and turned them over to me for comedic fodder. My daughter, Finley, did this with exuberance, because she is a besotted lover of language, and also I offered her twenty-five cents a word for anything that gets into this article.

A second factor in this story: my husband, Rob, and I had already been to the Galapagos. We took a nine-day cruise in 2014, a month before we got married, with the twelve- and fourteen-year-old boys who were about to become my stepsons. I was a 40-year-old single woman who was a little nervous to board a small boat for nine days with boys who were about to become my family, just as I was nervous to, you know, get a family. But our new-family home is decorated with pictures from that magical week–three manboys in a pile on the sand in front of three sea lions in an identical pile. I’ve yearned for the sea lions who swam up to our noses to gaze into our eyes, becoming the only creatures on Earth with whom I can make sustained eye contact, which is not a character flaw.

But our daughter wasn’t born yet, and twelve years later I was looking for a summer trip. She is a water baby, and loves animals. We are proudly “not cruise or tour people.” But I am a spontaneous wanderer, and Rob loves a multi-point travel plan … so we have also conceded that we have gotten along best when a third party is in charge of us. I tried to think of another trip that offered the same mix of animals, water fun, and marital tranquility and came up empty. There is nothing like the Galapagos.

I am someone whose dominant personality trait is managing expectations that, when not met, lead to an unreasonable amount of disappointment. It’s being addressed in both therapy and meditation sessions. Rob is a checker-offer in terms of life and travel–and repeating a trip doesn’t help him check off a new location. Yet we chose to do a once-in-a-lifetime trip twice.

What could go wrong?!

We placed ourselves into the capable hands of Abercrombie & Kent for our adventure, which started in Quito, before heading to their Relais & Châteaux Galapagos ship.

When my younger stepson applied to college, one of his essays was about how when you live with storytellers, you never get to tell your own story. My husband rewrote it. So, to avoid mistelling anyone’s story, the following is the report of how it went, from our three travel journals:

KRISTIN: We finally got to Quito at 4:30 in the morning. A&K put us in The Casa Gangotena, an elegant former mansion on the main old town plaza, and the “sixth best hotel in the world,” according to TripAdvisor.

FINLEY: I got a bed without wheels!

ROB: Our Abercrombie guide, Veronica, picked us up for our Quito tour, with a photographer! We had no idea where she was taking us.

KRISTIN: I love that we had no idea where she was taking us.

FINLEY: Veronica took us to the top of the church, and there was a drone filming us! We got to make chocolate and the sunset on the hotel roof was so pretty.

ROB: We have to get up early to go to the Galapagos. How early? Ecuador is all one time zone, the same as Chicago, except the Galapagos, which is 1 hour earlier–unless the U.S. is on Daylight Saving Time. I’m glad Veronica is getting us to the airport. 

KRISTIN: We don’t have to figure out a single thing for ourselves. I feel like a Queen Baby.

ROB: We were nervous about who was going to be on our twenty-person boat for a week. We were praying for new friends, especially for our solo kid.

KRISTIN: Abercrombie sends orange bag tags to their guests, so on our flight from Quito to San Cristobal Island we were scanning for the tags. Both of us sadly zeroed in on one family as we exited the plane, and I knew they would be ours.

ROB: They looked awful. Three red-headed teens in golf shirts. Dad had finance guy hair.

KRISTIN: A psychic said that I’m so intuitive that “with enough work,” I could be psychic. And, sure enough, once we got closer… orange tags. I knew it!

ROB: But there are three Ecoventura boats! We’re on Origin, they’re on Evolve! Suck it, Evolve!

FINLEY: We got three kids on our boat!!!! They are 10, 7, and 6 and are so fun.

KRISTIN: Thank God. And all our grownups seem lovely.

ROB: To our dismay, Finley had been telling her friends that she is spending a week on a “yacht.” But there’s no other word. Our craft is a 145-foot monohull Superyacht, made of Navy Grade steel. There’s a hot tub, the cabins have wall-to-wall windows, plus there’s a crane! I’m excited for the crane.

KRISTIN: It’s even nicer than the last boat. And the Jolie-Pitts took their kids on that one.

FINLEY: I thought the boat might tip over the first night, but Dad took me up to the deck and we watched the stars and then it wasn’t scary.

KRISTIN: There’s a hike or two per day, a snorkel or two per day. The weather is perfect, I saw a sea lion nursing underwater for the first time, and we’ve been surrounded by pods of hundreds of bottlenose dolphins.

FINLEY: After snorkeling with sharks and rays and penguins, I rinsed off on the top deck, and the waiter handed me hot chocolate in the shower that I took into the jacuzzi for the sunset.

KRISTIN: Are we ruining her?

ROB: Where is all of the fresh water for all of these showers coming from? Do they desalinate?

KRISTIN: We spent a gorgeous afternoon on a huge sea lion-covered beach, with white silky sand.

FINLEY: The white sand is parrot fish poop! They eat coral and poop out like a million pounds a day and then it turns into a beach!

ROB: The captain told me the boat’s water comes from two reverse osmosis machines, which can put out between 3,000 and 10,000 gallons a day.

KRISTIN: The kids rolled in the clear water with sea lion pups as the sun set.

FINLEY: There was a humpback whale skeleton on the beach!  The teenagers from the other boat were there, and these teenage girls kept screaming and running away from the sea lions. I’m so glad they aren’t on our boat. I’d have to teach them so much stuff.

ROB: When we were here with the boys, were WE the family everyone hoped wouldn’t be on their boat?

FINLEY: We went to the mountains to see the tortoises and two guys had to carry a giant tortoise out of the road. We learned tortoises don’t fight. One just stretches his neck as high as he can. If it’s higher than the other guy, he wins.

KRISTIN: I appreciate that the guide keeps saying things like, “This tortoise is very young. Maybe 40 or 50.”

ROB: Finley and Charley–the oldest brother–are having a lot of pinching wars.

FINLEY: My parents tell some jokes that aren’t appropriate sometimes. Like my mom told them my dad’s name was “Raw-butt” instead of Robert. And there are birds here called Boobies…

KRISTIN: The kids are from a polite Southern family, and the six-year-old said, “You’re the only funny family we’ve ever met.” I said, “Thank you, but I’m worried your parents don’t think we are a good influence.” The ten-year-old responded immediately: “Same.”

ROB: Kristin is working her ass off to be popular enough with the kids that Finley will let us sit at the kids’ table once.

KRISTIN: We got invited to the kids’ table! The Boobie jokes clinched it.

FINLEY: My mom just begged until finally we made an exception.

KRISTIN: The trip has been amazing, but I’m really craving seeing SOMETHING brand new. I’ve convinced Rob and Finley to add three days to explore the cloud and rain forest around Baños, an extreme sports tourist hub.

FINLEY: I love it here but I really want to go home to organize my room.

ROB: I’ve never changed a plane ticket. I’m not sure where we’re staying or what we’re doing…

KRISTIN: We said goodbye to our vacation friends at the airport. And then Abercrombie had a final treat–a trip to the “Middle of the World” monument at the equator. We climbed the tower, and then we were given dinner at sunset as everyone else left, and then we watched, astounded, as a montage of our trip photos, taken by the guides, was projected onto the tower. To “Til There Was You!”

FINLEY: Our family song!

ROB: They had trouble hooking up the sound system at first.

KRISTIN: We felt like oligarchs. Finley danced around in front of a five-story high version of herself. There were some five-story-high underwater photos. I reminded myself I am young for a tortoise.

FINLEY: Then we went to Baños.

KRISTIN: It’s a backpackery town with thermal hot springs, and a fascinating church.

ROB: Instead of religious scenes, they had paintings of historical extreme sports accidents and volcanic eruptions where the Virgin of Agua Santa saved the faithful. Very practical. And it turned out Baños was maybe the best part of the trip. Kristin found this beautiful hotel nestled into the mountains–Samari Spa Hotel — that was a 300-year-old former Jesuit retreat.

FINLEY: The hotel was like exactly like the house in Encanto–so, so beautiful.

KRISTIN: We ziplined across the biggest river gorge we’ve ever seen, strapped together horizontally like a superhero family. And we tried canyoning!

ROB: Canyoning down five waterfalls felt crazy with a nine-year-old. But she was awesome. And now we’ve checked off canyoning!

FINLEY: Walking up the hill in a wetsuit was awful. But the water felt so good, and the guide rappelled next to me, and the jumps weren’t as scary as I thought they’d be. It was one of my highlights. Tied with the chocolate massage at the hotel.

KRISTIN: They covered her in sugar and chocolate. When I looked up from my massage, she was in a chocolate bath eating cake. This and sending her over a 40-foot cliff are making me feel like either the best or the worst parent in the world.

ROB: We agreed Kristin made the right call. She makes magic. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

KRISTIN: So should you do a once-in-a-lifetime trip twice? I’m glad we did. There was something calming about the sameness of the place when our lives had changed so much. But our spontaneous add-on days, with just the three of us arguing a bit as we found our own new experiences, were the part that made us feel the proudest of ourselves, and the most connected as a family.

And maybe the disagreements don’t matter. On our last day in the Galapagos, we climbed the same iconic hill we climbed twelve years ago, when we snapped a photo with our smiling teen boys, in my last month as a single non-mom. This time we went up that hill dragging an incredibly grumpy, complaining nine-year-old-of-my-womb.

FINLEY: It was the end of the day! Then they were like who’s ready for a hike.

KRISTIN: But Rob reminded me that her then-teen brother, William, also climbed that same hill grumbling that it wasn’t as big as the mountain he climbed on his surf club trip to Hawaii. It was a reminder that, in time, you just remember the smiles at the top of the volcano, or at the bottom of five waterfalls.

ROB: William sweetly picked us up from the airport when we got home. After Finley told him about jumping off a twenty-foot waterfall, he said twenty feet felt high to him, too… until he jumped off a sixty-footer… on his surf club trip to Hawaii.

KRISTIN: That actually happened.