Galapagos Pictures
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Comfortable yachts at 3 price levels [or a hotel based tour], guides and plenty of activities - snorkeling, hiking, kayaking - make a memorable Galapagos holiday. Wildlife Odyssey | Galapagos Cruises | Galapagos Multisports | Hiking Galapagos | Tour Discounts |
A
tourist entertains the local fisherfolk with
tales of wild nights in Quito.
These photos attempt to give you an impression of what you will see if you care to take a trip to Ecuador's Galapagos Islands. It covers a little of the landscape, the ships you might travel in, and a lot of the animals and birds you would meet around and about - sea lions, penguins, iguanas, giant tortoises, blue-footed boobies, pelicans, frigate birds, albatrosses, varied herons and oyster catchers.
The
islands, officially known as 'Archipélago de Colón' [1892],
were visited by Charles Darwin in 1835 and the inter-island variations
of the giant tortoises and finches [small birds!] inspired his revolutionary
and controversial 'The Origin of the Species by Natural Selection',
Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
Since then the islands, 1,000km [620 miles] off the South American coast
and claimed by Ecuador in 1832, have hosted mainly fishermen, whalers,
pirates and prisoners, only evolving into a National Park in 1959, precisely
100 years after Darwin's publication.
Tourism in the area is strictly controlled and guides are mandatory,
so there's no way to do this trip on the super-cheap. You can reduce
costs by organising your own flights to Santa Cruz island from the mainland,
and finding accommodation and boats when you get there, but most of
the yearly 60,000 visitors bite the bullet and pay the price, knowing
that they are guaranteed a unique close-to-the-claw wildlife experience
that not even Africa can match.
Galapagos Photos © bugbog.com and its licensors. All rights reserved