Ecuador Guide
The Galápagos Islands
It's quite humbling that a scattering of scarred volcanic islands, flung across 45,000 square kilometres of ocean, 960km adrift from the Ecuadorian mainland and defying permanent human colonization until the twentieth century, should have been so instrumental in changing humanity's perception of itself. Yet, once feared as a bewitched and waterless hell, then the haunt of pirates, and later still an inhospitable pit stop for whaling ships, it was the forbidding Galápagos Islands that spurred Charles Darwin to formulate his theory of evolution by natural selection, catapulting science into the modern era and colouring the values and attitudes of the Western world ever since.
Today, the Galápagos Islands' matchless wildlife and natural history pulls in around 70,000 foreign tourists a year to the archipelago – most of which can only be seen on expensive boat tours – financing what is now Ecuador's wealthiest province. The province's population of around 21,000 live in just eight main settlements on four inhabited islands. In the centre of them all lies Santa Cruz, site of Puerto Ayora, the islands' most developed town and serviced by the airstrip on Baltra, where the majority of tourists begin a visit to the islands. San Cristóbal, to the east, holds the provincial capital, Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, and while this is less developed than Puerto Ayora, it does possess the archipelago's other major runway and is nurturing a reputation as a surfing centre. Straddling the equator to the west of Santa Cruz is the largest and most volcanically active of all the islands, Isabela, whose main settlement, tiny Puerto Villamil, keeps the archipelago's only other airport, while to the south of Santa Cruz, Floreana, with its population of fewer than ninety people, has very little by way of infrastructure but does have a bizarre history of settlement.
Highlights
1 Puerto Ayora A friendly and bustling little port, home to the islands' best hotels, restaurants and bars, not to mention the Charles Darwin Research Station, the engine of Galápagos study and conservation.
2 Sulivan Bay Explore a century-old pahoehoe lava flow patterned with petrified ripples, squiggles and swirls that give it the appearance of having only just cooled.
3 Bartolomé A small island with a spectacular summit vantage point overlooking Pinnacle Rock, a landmark rock poised above a little bay where you can snorkel among Galápagos penguins.
4 Waved albatrosses in Punta Suárez After ranging the oceans, the gentle giants of the Galápagos return to Española between April and December, and enact enthralling courtship displays before breeding with their lifelong partners.
5 Gardner Bay One of the finest beaches in the islands, a long streak of brilliant white sand, lapped by azure waters ideal for swimming and snorkelling.
6 Genovesa An isolated island formed from a half-submerged crater at the northeastern extreme of the archipelago, where you can snorkel with hammerhead sharks.
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