Galapagos Guides

The question is now, who are we, where are we from?

Tourism began by inertia, scientists working on the islands-chartered fishing boats to go around to discover the fascinating natural history of Galapagos. Sometimes researchers had relatives joining them since they were there for a visit and that’s how it all began.

Along the way more people came to visit, but without some guidance was not as nice, therefore around the 70’s the first guide course took place, and some were local inhabitants and a few from Ecuador mainland and other countries. License 001 was born.

Fifty years have passed by and guiding became not just a profession but a sign of improving in life in the local society.

At the beginning mostly students from abroad were hired, they were geologist, biologists or similar and spoke more than one language, but they left after one year to continue their studies. Local inhabitants were guides also but since they had no access to learn languages even more so an academic degree, they did not have much of an opportunity to join the team of the nice looking boats.

Around the 90´s is when my generation came, we were mainly kids from the mainland with more access to learn more than one language, but not precisely scientists. By then some true islanders willing to be seen as an option began to learn languages on their own or left the islands with the purpose to be back with more knowledge. Some never returned, some did.