There are plenty of online platitudes regarding Celebrity Xpedition cruises to the Galapagos. Rather than reiterate that this is an amazing experience, I'm going to try to answer some of the questions that we either couldn't find answered or didn't know we should ask before our trip.

First, let me be clear that we cruised the Outer Loop in early January of 2017. My sense was that these trips vary considerably from one week to the next. one key variable is weather. Online weather predications are useless, because Galapagos weather is highly localized. What I can say is that January is supposed to be the beginning of three months referred to as the "rainy season," and the remainder of the year should be extremely dry. We were told that even when it does rain it is sporadic, often short-lived and more likely misty than a downpour. We had a couple of hours of mist total for seven days. On the other hand it can get extremely hot (100 degrees F) on shore excursions. We were always grateful if we had cloud cover, because there is virtually no shade on the islands. Plan to perspire.

Excursions in the Galapagos are tightly prescribed by the Galapagos National Park Service. Every group must be accompanied by a park-certified naturalist and no bigger than 16 people. The Xpedition had seven such naturalists not counting the tour director, who was also a certified naturalist. All of our naturalists were Ecuadorian (as was the entire crew I believe); a few grew up in the Galapagos; all had university degrees; all spoke excellent English. It appears that Celebrity attracts some of the best, as several have been with the Xpedition for over a decade and many had worked first for other companies. One interesting advantage of the Xpedition is that the Park Service restricts each landing site to no more then 100 people. Smaller boats often share a site with other small boats. Due to its size the Xpedition does not share excursion sites so the boat can coordinate how the site is used. Our excursions were so carefully dispatched that we rarely even saw folks from our own ship other than those in our group of 16. Read more