A panoramic view
from the volcanic
island of Bartolomé
The Beagle; Darwin
memorial (right)
of the Galapagos
owes to its remote
geography. Located
some 1,000 kilometres from mainland
Ecuador, only four of the archipelago’s
19 islands are inhabited. Such isolation
has fostered flora and fauna that simply
do not exist elsewhere in the world:
marine iguanas, giant tortoises, lava
lizards and towering Miconia shrubs.
The existence of such one-of-a-kind
species intrigued a young Charles
Darwin in 1835. Though he’s often
credited with putting the Galapagos
on the map, Darwin spent just five
weeks on the islands. His relatively
brief stopover came at the end of his
five-year voyage as a naturalist on the