Well that was a bust. Last week, I boarded a small cruise ship for a trip to Genovesa Island, also known as Bird Island. It is way north in the Galapagos Archipelago; of the hundreds of cruise ships making the rounds of the islands, only a few make a stop there. I didn’t really want to do another cruise (for the majority of them, snorkeling is the focus, and I don’t snorkle), but it was the only way to get to Bird Island.

So imagine my shock when, 30 minutes into the sail, I overheard one of the passengers say, “it’s too bad we’re not stopping at Bird Island.” If the ship wasn’t already moving, I would have been tempted to disembark on the spot.

It turns out that Bird Island has been shut down for several months due to an outbreak of bird flu. The company I booked through (which I have since learned was a third party partner and not the actual company running the cruise), never updated their itinerary, and continued sending out an itinerary that promised a stop at Bird Island.

I’m beyond disappointed that I wasted a lot of money on a cruise that didn’t give me what I paid for. In place of the promised treks to view thousands of red-footed boobies, they substituted two extra snorkeling stops. I’m a birder, not a snorkeler, so it didn’t feel like an equivalent substitute. I recognize that they don’t have any control over avian flu outbreaks, but it seems they should have better control over the accuracy of their published itineraries. I’ve submitted an official complaint to the company, asking for a partial refund, but have yet to hear back from them.

Though we did have a sea lion who popped in to sunbathe on our deck, so that was a little something to smile about.