A white liveaboard with a blue hull stripe lying at anchor under heavy grey cloud
Miles Below · Operator · Galápagos

Peter Hughes Sky Dancer

A proper expedition boat running the northern route to Darwin and Wolf, which is the reason to come and not reachable any other way.

01The week02Scored03Before you book04Money05Prints06The trip
01The week
Divers in wetsuits packed shoulder to shoulder in an inflatable tender, tanks upright between them, running through open swell
Divers in wetsuits packed shoulder to shoulder in an inflatable tender, tanks upright between them, running through open swell
At the resort

What the week is actually like

Read the itinerary carefully. On my twelve-day trip, two afternoons went to land-based tours and another full day went to an island visit, so twelve days bought nine days of diving. That is not a complaint about the boat; the land days in the Galápagos are genuinely worth having, and marine iguanas and penguins are part of why you came. But if you are counting tanks, count them before you pay, because the brochure number and the diving number are different.

Setting is the benchmark on this site and it is not close. You wake up anchored off a volcano in the middle of the Pacific with sea lions on the swim platform.

02The verdict
60
Operator · Peter Hughes Sky Dancer
C
Grade

The pale band on each row is the range every scored operator on this site covers.

How the scoring works

Operation
3
Camera
7
Food
7
Setting
5
Value
7
Sustainability
7
Total
36/60
A man standing on the covered dive deck of a liveaboard, gear stowed along the rail behind him and the sea running past
A man standing on the covered dive deck of a liveaboard, gear stowed along the rail behind him and the sea running past
03Before you book
The photographer's questions

For the camera

Miles to edit

Camera and diving facts still missing: Station, Camera room, Power, Camera room outlets, Extra power bar, Air guns, Camera room charging, Staff handling, Entry, Rinse, resort, Rinse, boat, Dive time, Guide ratio, Photography guide, Unguided, Nitrox.
Same shape as Misool's in operator-facts.json: v, n, src.

Worth knowing

Three things nobody tells you

Go in shoulder season and the currents get genuinely unpredictable — even a good crew's briefing can be wrong. At Darwin Arch we were told the current would bend left; it bent right instead, and half the group surfaced nearly half a mile from the boat.

Bring something to tether your camera. You'll be using a reef hook, or hanging onto rock by hand where reef hooks are banned — either way, a loose grip on your rig in that kind of current is how you lose it.

Bring a spare mask too. Tilt your mask in a strong current and it can come off outright — not a remote risk here, a real one.

04The money

Flights, transfers and what to sort first

Liveaboard is the only way to reach Darwin and Wolf. Day-boat diving from the inhabited islands is a different and much lesser trip.

DAILY RATE
$550 to $850  a day, USD, at the operator
Getting there
Baltra or San Cristóbal, via Quito or Guayaquil. Budget an overnight on the mainland in each direction.
Liveaboard only
Darwin and Wolf are unreachable from the inhabited islands. Day-boat diving is a different and much lesser trip.
Exposure
5–7 mm and a hood, minimum. It is colder than the equator suggests and the thermoclines are brutal.
Ask the operator
Tender numbers, equipment redundancy, and whether every diver is issued a personal locator beacon. Those questions come from experience.
Park fees
Substantial and payable on arrival, separate from the trip cost.
05Prints

Prints from Galápagos

Every frame here was made in Galápagos. Prices in US dollars. Printed on Canson Platine and shipped from British Columbia.

Dolphin mono, Galápagos
$150
Dolphin mono
Open edition · 12 × 18 in
06The trip
Galápagos
Green turtle head on over lava, Galápagos
Would you dive Galápagos?

Put your hand up and I will tell you when a trip is planned

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