To get to the Galapagos Islands, we flew from Guayaquil to the airport on Baltra, a flat island just off Santa Cruz. The Americans had a base on Baltra during WW2 and the name of the island is apparently the nearest the Spanish-speaking locals could make of "Base Three" as pronounced by very bored U.S. servicemen. A short bus ride across Baltra, a shorter ferry across Itabaca Channel, then a forty-minute bus ride on the Santa Cruz Highway to Puerto Ayora, stopping for lunch on the way, where we had our first encounter with giant tortoises. At Puerto Ayora (the main centre of activity in the islands, but not the provincial capital), we walked to the Charles Darwin Research Centre to meet more tortoises and be impressed with the work done there, before boarding Isabela II.
Then we came back to Santa Cruz some days later for another bus trip to to the highlands to meet more tortoises, walk through a lava tunnel, visit a village where a wicked home brew was sampled, explore the town, and have lunch at an up-market hotel.