Has anyone been to the Galapagos?

[My2Girls66]

My daughter is living in Quito, Ecuador for the next 4 months, we are thinking of taking a trip to see her and include the Galapagos. I was wondering in a 70-300mm is enough zoom or would longer be better?

 

[jec6613]

70-300 mm on a crop body is enough, though you might want 400 on full frame. You should look into a waterproof option too, and be careful about weight - in and out of GPS has a very low weight limit, because aircraft carry their fuel for a round trip journey and cargo is at a premium (everything comes in and out of what was originally an old Army Air Force base).

You don't say if you're Nikon or Canon, but on the Nikon side of the fence, the new 80-400 mm is a much better lens optically than the 70-300 (which is also very good), so you may want to consider it for other reasons.

 

[My2Girls66]

Thanks! I have a NIkon D7000 and the 70-300mmVR, I am planning on purchasing the Tamron 150-600 in the near future but would prefer not to have to carry it. Hopefully we can store our stuff in my DD's apt in Quito for our trip to GPS so we can go light. The tentative plan is to fly into Quito, stay a few days, fly to GPS for 5 or so days, then back to Quito for a few days.

 

[jec6613]

That's a very good pair for the job. The 150-600 is really probably overkill for there, there are so few times when you'd use it that I wouldn't bother. I can count on one hand the times I wish my D7100 had more than 300 mm on it the entire time I was there - unless you're into birding, of course, in which case ...

Most cruises of the Galapagos run for 7-ish days, so you'll probably have to plan on it for that long. Also, presuming you're flying AA into UIO, they fly the 757's with big engines as it's a hot/high airport ... the A320 that you take to GPS has less power and seems to barely get out of there, so if you're a nervous flier I suggest not looking out of the window.

 

[My2Girls66]

We haven't booked anything yet but AA is the airline that keeps coming up from Boston. We are waiting to see when DD can get time off to go to GPS with us. Our plan is to do a land based tour. Most likely stay on Santa Cruz and take day trips from there. I know we won't get to see some of the more remote islands but it looks like we'll get to see the wildlife we want and do some beach and snorkeling

 

[jec6613]

Sounds good.

And yeah, AA picked up PAA's old routes to South America and has the dominate presence in and out of there to the US, via MIA and to a much lesser extent LAX and DFW.