I went on a liveaboard dive trip to the Galapagos Islands in September of 2019. The Galapagos is usually considered a bucket list or mecca trip for scuba divers. I spent a week on a scuba diving liveaboard boat called the Calipso and this is my quick review as well as video tour of it. Here is my video about the Calipso showing you what it’s like inside the liveaboard boat as well as some of the outside decks.
This was my first scuba diving liveaboard trip so I really have no basis of comparisons with other liveaboards but I have been on cruises before as well as lots of dive trips. The Calipso had representatives that met us at connecting airports in Guayaquil and San Cristobal which was a nice touch. Divers then got transported by bus along with their luggage separately to the port where we boarded inflatable panga (Zodiac like) boats to get to the Calipso.
I shot the video of my cabin upon boarding and as you can see, it was pretty comfortable especially for just one person. The single cabins were on the lower deck across from the galley rather than on the upper levels but this was never a problem for me. What was a bit of a nuisance was that my cabin was pretty close to the anchor which was pretty loud each time they lowered and raised it, even in the middle of the night. But that’s life on a boat.
One of the reasons why I booked with the Calipso was because they offered me a single cabin without charging a single supplement like most other liveaboards do. We had a full house of 16 guest divers, 3 staff divemasters and a crew for the boat but at no time did I feel it was overcrowded. The Calipso was quite spacious in my opinion.
The food services was good too with lots of variety but of course 5 star Michelin rated fine dining was not expected for a dive boat. At times some meats were a bit overcooked but overall divers were fed really well so I had no major complaints about the food on board. The crew also did a great job in keeping the entire boat spotless and my cabin was even clean each time I went out on dives which was 3 to 4 times daily.
Scuba Diving Program On The Calipso Liveaboard
In order to dive the best sites in the Galapagos, one would need to travel to Wolf and Darwin islands which are too far and remote for any day boats to get to so taking a liveaboard is the only way. I noticed the Aggressor liveaboard (one of the major dive liveaboard fleets worldwide) docked near us at several of the dive sites so I assume that all scuba diving liveaboards that go out for a week go to the same dive sites each offering around 20 dives over the week.
The dive program run by the Calipso was good overall. We had a divemaster for each group of 8 divers on each panga boat. I wished we had two divemasters for each group of divers given the rough conditions of the seas. I’ll say for now that the Calipso dive crew helped me get my mission accomplished in seeing mostly everything I wanted to see on this trip.
Overall I was pretty pleased with the Calipso and if one is set on going to the Galapagos Islands for a liveaboard scuba diving trip then you cannot go wrong by choosing the Calipso. They also do naturalist cruises of the Galapagos in addition to just scuba diving weeks and I would imagine that the Calipso would be a decent liveaboard boat for that too. At the end of our week after all the scuba diving was finished, we were taken on a land tour on Santa Cruz island to see the giant tortoises and I was pretty happy with that excursion.
