Galapagos Master

★ 5 · Evan Cooper · 2026-04-23

The best liveaboard I have been on (and I have been on 3) by far. Everything from the diving to crew to guides was very professional, well thought out, detail oriented, and thorough. The wildlife did not disappoint, with amazing biodiversity on every dive. Also, the viz was very good. Carlos and Jacob were awesome dive guides. I could not ask for better people to lead us underwater. I felt very safe, even in tough currents and conditions. The dive briefings were very helpful and helped me feel confident before each dive. They also did a great job handling a very inexperienced and bad diver in my group, while not taking away from my experience. I could see the effort they put in to make sure he was safe, even as a very unsafe diver. I would not have been able to handle him the way that they did. Hans also did a great job helping him underwater, even as the diver was pulling him down and clueless as what to do. One suggestion, is to make sure all of the divers are experienced enough for the difficult dives, because the customer was not capable of doing an easy dive or even snorkeling. However, like stated before, the crew handled it the best that they could. For other crew, they went above and beyond helping me fix my vaccum pump for my underwater camera when it broke, spending an hour with me, when I only asked for a tool so I could fix it. It was late already last dinner, and they did not have to do this, and I am very grateful to them for that help. There was never a time I did not enjoy my time on this trip, and it was once in a lifetime!

★ 4 · Christopher M. Holcomb · 2018-01-31

The Galapagos Master did a lot of things right and I was generally impressed. It's a beautiful vessel with great staff. I gave three stars for value only because this is a high-end luxury trip and the price tag reflects it. It was not economical. However, there were a few fundamental problems. For one, there were only two guides for 11 guests (15 guests if the trip is sold out). With variable visibility and strong currents, I feel very strongly that diving in such large groups caused a lot of problems for group dynamics that really detracted from the diving. I would say that 4-5 divers per group would help considerably. I sometimes spent a third of the dive just holding onto rocks, flagging in the current with nothing to see, while waiting for the group to reconvene. I realize that the logistics are difficult with only two pangas, but this was my experience. Also, the two dive guides were mostly amazing, but after warning us about how challenging dive conditions are in the Galapagos, they often did not check in with the group often enough to manage problems, air consumption, or to stop when we found something interesting. Also, given that the La Nina conditions we experienced (i.e. up to 10 degrees F colder than normal) had been documented for over a month before the trip, influencing weather patterns all over the US, the staff really should have warned the guests while packing about the potential for water temperatures that were far below what was advertised as typical for January. When you are not prepared for it, diving in 60 F water when you expect 72 F can be a real problem.