This is more of a factual post for anyone following behind us so you don't make the same mistakes that we did. There are loads of blog posts about the three different options of checking into the islands, we wanted to visit multiple islands on our own boat and as such, decided on the autografo. What we should have done is arrange this with an agent beforehand. That's not to say that you can't get one when you arrive but it just takes that much longer. Being budget yachties, we also thought that there may be ways and means of doing it ourselves, cutting out the agent fee…this is not the case. You cannot get around this unless you speak fluent Spanish and even then, with the amount of box ticking and to-ing and fro-ing needed with the officials, I think the $120 we spent on using an agent was money well invested!
When in Panama we contacted an agent and attempted to start the bureaucratic process that is unavoidable in the Galapagos. Unfortunately his email responses were very delayed and as such by the time we left Panama, we hadn't handed over any money or obtained a permit. We could have contacted another agent but in our haste to start our Pacific adventure, it slipped down our list of priorities.
So we arrived in San Cristobal and as soon as we dropped anchor (I was still cleating off the snubber!), a water taxi came over and Karmela Romero invited herself aboard. Turns out she is the sister of Johnny Romero who we had failed to communicate with back in Panama and is his go to person on San Cristobal as he works out of Santa Cruz. As she was so keen we didn't shop around for other agents and got the paperwork started with her right away. Make sure you have at least 4 copies of each passport (preferably colour), ships registration and crew list. We did so I'm not sure of the consequences of not meeting these requirements…
To cut a loooong story short, we never got our autografo despite hanging around for 2 weeks with promises of 'mañana mañana' - tomorrow tomorrow. It took 5 days just to get our passports back from being stamped, an anxious time for us as like most people, we hate being parted from our passports. Possibly our most important valuable, especially on a boat. To enquire on the progress of our application, we would have to traipse around the town looking for Karmela each time and when we did find her, she would often pretend she didn't understand us yet when we had the conversation about money, her English was superb. Never once did she turn up at our boat without being prompted several times even when we had an agreed time of meeting. It seems she is very eager to get the money off you and then as soon as that is handed over, all customer service grinds to a halt.
It's important to note that all of this aggro may very well have been avoided if we had successfully applied and received our autografo prior to entering the archipelago. Regardless of timing, I would not recommend using Johnny Romero's services due to their poor (if any) communication and lack of support. Speaking to other cruisers it seems others have had similar experiences to ours when using this agent. In hindsight, due to the lack of wind near the islands, if we were to do it over, we would just stay in one port and then pay for a cruise to the other islands. This would save on diesel, chafe of the sails and provide us with a mini holiday within a holiday!
This is quite a negative post due to our checking in experience but aside from the bureaucracy, we loved San Cristobal (see my next post for information on what we got up to). Others have mentioned that the islands are overrated but we wholly disagree and will be recommending it to anyone following in our wake.
Here are the costs of an autografo and other necessary paperwork as of March 2013, agent fees range from $120 - $180 depending on who you use and how wealthy you come across!
Autografo - $200
Agent fee - $120
National Park Permit - $100 /pp
Customs and immigration - $30
Quarantine - $20
Port Captain - $100
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