From Guayaquil, after an hour and a quarter of flight, they emerge unexpectedly from the deep blue ocean:

The enchanted islands, the enchanted islands, the enchanting islands. Tropical Dream World, Paradise on Earth, Noah’s Ark in the Pacific, God’s Workshop, Model Example of Evolution or Fantastic Laboratory of Nature, are the many other intoxicating epithets for the exotic Galápagos archipelago, which has become the magical formula of constantly increasing visitor numbers for the entire Ecuadorian tourism industry worldwide.

Location and size
Almost 1,000 kilometers west of the Ecuadorian mainland, or 1,200 km southwest of Panamá and Costa Rica, lie the 70 islands, islands, and volcanic rocks of the Galápagos archipelago that rise out of the water. Isabela, by far the largest island among them with 4,588 square kilometers, takes up more than half of the total area.

It is followed by Santa Cruz (986 sq km), Fernandina (642 sq km), Santiago (585 sq km), San Cristóbal (558 sq km), Floreana (173 sq km) and Marchena (115 sq km). The total surface of the archipelago is just over 8,000 sq km. Among the smallest islands with an area of 1 to 5 square kilometers are Rábida, Seymour, Wolf, Bartolomé, Tortuga and Darwin.

Drawn on an axis from west to east, the island kingdom stretches over 320 km. The equatorial line runs exactly through the volcanic crater Wolf in the northern part of Isabela Island. With a height of 1,707m, this is also the highest elevation on Galápagos.

The history of the archipelago
Like many other volcanic island chains in the Pacific region, the Galápagos Islands are of oceanic descent. Oceanic in this case means the opposite of continental, i.e. the islands have had no connection to the mainland in the course of their formation history or have emerged from it by drifting. They were lifted up from the depths of the sea to the surface of the water quite independently of the geological events on the South American continent, or were created by a hot magma ejection from the earth’s interior. Similar to the Hawaiian Islands, the Galápagos Islands are still very young, and still “growing”!

The geological structure of the earth can be compared to a peach. The hard inner core of the earth is surrounded by a soft flesh (magma). This viscous mantle is held together by a thin outer shell, the Earth’s crust. This outer crust of the Earth is divided into twelve large plates that constantly rub against each other like a movable spherical mosaic, collide with each other, fold each other open and submerge each other as they float around on the viscous mantle.

The continuous movements of these colliding plates eventually lead to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The cause of these tectonic plate movements are certain currents and countercurrents within the Earth’s mantle, which grind the Earth’s crust in one place and reshape it in another place to compensate.

The Galápagos Islands are located on the northern edge of the so-called Nazca Plate. This plate is slowly moving eastwards towards the South American plate – at an annual rhythm of about nine centimetres. The South American plate, on which the continent of the same name is located, on the other hand, is moving westwards, at a speed of about five centimeters per year. These two plates collide west of the South American Pacific coast in a kind of slow-motion collision. Along this zone, where the lighter Nazca Plate dives under the heavier South American Plate, not only has a deep sea trench formed, but also the mighty Andean chain has been folded out by the continuous pushing up of the continental plate.

A little further north of Galápagos is also the Cocos Plate, which finally dives under the Caribbean Plate. The islands are therefore located exactly in the border area of these three plates. The gradual drifting away of the Nazca Plate – and thus also of the Galápagos archipelago – explains the folds of the sea and land floor, but not yet the volcanic activity of the islands.

Beneath the Galápagos Islands is a point that geologists call a hot spot. A hot spot is a zone of hot rising magma in the lower part of the Earth’s mantle, which eventually pierces through the Earth’s hard crust like a fire-breathing fountain. This hot spot has formed an underwater platform at this point like a heat bubble from which the isolated Galápagos volcanoes rise. They are nothing more than the valves of this underground hot spot. Where one of these volcanic cones protrudes from the ocean, a new island is formed. In the case of Isabela Island, these were once five separate volcanoes that have merged into one large landmass due to persistent eruptions and lava outflows.

However, since this hot spot always remains in the same place, while the Nazca Plate drifts towards the continent at the same time, the Galápagos Islands are to be divided from east to west in terms of age. The oldest islands are the easternmost Española and San Cristóbal (over 3 million years old), while the youngest are also the most volcanically active: Fernandina and Isabela (about 700,000 years old).

The current archipelago therefore rises from the water in two different forms. The round volcanic cones are the result of this fixed hot spot, while the flattened block mounds are the result of the Nazca plate movement, which partially folded the seabed above the water surface. Some of the islands have been formed in this context by a combination of these two primordial forces.

Recent geological findings have provided evidence that there must have been a kind of “Proto-Galápagos” further east of the islands (over nine million years ago). These forerunners of today’s islands have long since been eroded and disappeared into the sea. They were much closer to the continent than today’s islands and can therefore also provide completely new information about the theory of evolution.

In the end, the animal world did not have to travel such a long way to get to the archipelago. At least not as initially suspected. This proto-archipelago was located just 300 – 400 kilometers west of the continent. This also explains why there are animals and plants on Galápagos which, due to their endemic stage of development, must have passed through an age that far exceeds the age of today’s islands.

Due to the meeting of various Pacific ocean currents in interaction with the winds, the Galápagos Islands do not have a typical equatorial climate, but rather have a unique microclimate. The ocean currents are the key to this phenomenon, which basically causes two seasons – one cool and one warm.

From January to May / June, tropical summer air temperatures prevail due to mild northeast trade winds. The North Equatorial Panamá Current, which is also known as El Niño due to its unusual strength, supplies warm, plankton-poor seawater (24-27 degrees). In the process, the moist air above the ocean is warmed up and condensed. During these months, heavy rain showers can also occur in the coastal area of the islands, while many marine animals and seabirds have to fear for their food due to the absence of the cold, nutrient-rich Humboldt Current from the south.

Nevertheless, the archipelago has the most sunny days during this humid season. The otherwise dry vegetation thrives magnificently and takes on colour. Even the dusty, desert-like island of Baltra is covered by a green carpet. In addition, many animals begin to reproduce during this season, which is more attractive to tourists.

From June to December / January, in the so-called garúa months, cool air and water temperatures prevail. With the Humboldt Current from Antarctic climes, subtropical weather fronts will reach Galápagos from the south. A sea of dense clouds envelops the higher altitudes of the islands, which is caused by the interaction of cold water (17-20 degrees) and warm air. Strong trade winds from the southeast drive this effect even further.

There is fog and continuous drizzle (garúa). In addition, the cold equatorial Cromwell Current, which hits the Galápagos Plateau from the west at a depth of several hundred meters (Fernandina, Isabela, Floreana), plays another decisive role in the nutrient supply of the dolphins, whales and penguins living mainly in this zone.

The plankton-rich sea is very rough, especially in the months from August to October, and the marine fauna multiplies more during this season. The coastal vegetation, on the other hand, is visibly drying up, even the Palo Santo forests are losing their leaves completely. Dust and stones are often the first impression of visitors to the island. For divers, this is one of the most exciting seasons. However, land-goers are advised to pack a warming jacket or a light sweater.

There is hardly a place on earth where animals are easier to observe in the wild than on the Galápagos Islands.

Despite the slaughter caused by pirates, buccaneers, whalers, fur seal hunters, settlers and the US Navy for centuries, the animals show no fear of the constantly landing hordes of tourists. At some visitor locations, the camera-armed groups even march through their territories by the dozens every day, stumbling past their living niches and breeding grounds, and unsettling their newborns. The adult animals remain undaunted and can be photographed steadfastly at very close range. Humans are simply accepted as an insignificant part of their natural environment. Some animals, especially sea lion cubs and Darwin’s finches, even show undisguised curiosity. Others, on the other hand, such as the gannets, snap with their beaks when they come too close.

This unanimous approval of humans on the part of the animals is primarily due to the professional nature guides who have been working according to the strict guidelines of the National Park Administration for decades. One of the most urgent tasks of the Guids is that the tourists only walk along the prescribed paths, so as not to step on the animals or their nesting sites off the paths. Visitors who cannot resist the temptation to leave the marked path are immediately reprimanded. Apart from that, sooner or later the coveted motif will sit directly on the side of the path in front of the lens anyway. In order to get a better shot, care should also be taken to ensure that many birds and iguanas breed in the middle of the tourist paths. In order not to destroy these breeding sites, careful evasion is the top priority. Never step directly over a nest!

There are also selfish sea lion bulls who stubbornly occupy the jetty, or want to claim the beautiful beach all to themselves and their numerous playmates. Here, too, any kind of confrontation should be avoided. The National Park regulations do not apply to animals, even if they are ultimately intended only for them.

The best time to observe the wild animals is in the early morning and late afternoon. Around noon, the marine iguanas often dive the ocean floor for food, as do the sea lions and sea turtles. The many seabirds also often have better things to do in the midday heat than pose for the cameras of the ecstatic tourists.

On practically every Galápagos island, visitors get to see sea lions, marine iguanas, cliff crabs, lava lizards and Darwin’s finches. On most islands, however, you can encounter blue-footed boobies, tropic birds, pelicans, fork-tailed gulls, mockingbirds and Galápagos buzzards. On many islands, on the other hand, there are masked boobies, banded and magnificent frigate birds, noddy terns and lava gulls. On a few islands you can find giant tortoises, fur seals, land iguanas, flightless cormorants, flamingos, penguins and red-footed boobies. And only on Española can the sluggish albatross be observed breeding at very close range.

There are very few different mammal species on Galápagos. To be more precise, only four! The Galápagos rice rat, which can be found in two subspecies on Santa Fé and Fernandina, and the Galápagos bat, which sometimes flutters around the street lamps on the Malecón in the harbour towns, play a completely insignificant role for visitors.

This glaring shortage of mammals is simply due to the fact that there had never been a land bridge between the islands and the mainland. Otherwise the animal world would have to be composed quite differently today. At least some of the large land mammals of the Ecuadorian mainland would be expected with a prehistoric connection to the continent.

The most common mammals on practically all coasts of the Galápagos Islands are the sea lions. Newcomers will be able to confirm this at first glance – even with their eyes closed! The guttural WCC sounds of the omnipresent swimming stars sometimes even haunt island visitors and boat trippers until they sleep. The dinghies and jetties in the harbour basins of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno (San Cristóbal) and Puerto Ayora (Santa Cruz) are often used by the sea lions as a bedding. Fishermen don’t like this at all, as the playful and curious animals shamelessly leave their stinking droppings behind in the boats. If you walk to the quay in the harbour town of Puerto Villamil in the evening, you should keep in mind that the electricity is turned off around 10 p.m., and thus the light is switched off. If you then accidentally stumble over a bull resting there in the dark, you may not only be deeply shocked by its loud curses. The sharp bite of an angry bull sea lion can cause nasty flesh wounds!

On Plaza Island, the Galápagos sea lions – incidentally very close relatives of the Californian sea lions – have now polished the stones on the shores and cliffs smooth due to their numerous colonies. Sea lions are polygamous. A single bull can have a harem of up to 25 people under its wing. After a gestation period of nine months, each of its females usually gives birth to a young weighing about 5 kilos towards the end of the year. And there is another point in which the sea lion does not differ too much from the average Latin American: During the rutting season, bloody territorial fights among jealous bulls are by no means unusual!

In Plaza and Rábida there are also small colonies of exclusively old people and bachelors. These bulls came away empty-handed in the annual female distribution and have developed into real loners. You shouldn’t get too close to them. They are considered extremely aggressive and do not understand intrusive photo fun at all.

Sea lions are excellent swimmers and even more elegant divers. You can swim for miles out to sea and reach diving depths of 250 meters. The most imposing of the bulls are simply terrifying when they stand up on their front flippers and dash towards you, scolding loudly. At the latest then it’s time to throw away the camera and make a bow tie.

The Galápagos fur seal differs from the sea lion by its denser fur, the smaller rather rounded head, the flattened nose, the larger auricles, and the lost melancholic look. On land, the fur seals, which are otherwise native to Antarctic climes, can only be found in shady rock niches and small grottos, where they can protect themselves from the equatorial sun. The Galápagos Islands owe their presence to the cold Humboldt Current.

Unlike sea lions, fur seals never seek out the sandy beaches. Their exact population size on Galápagos is not exactly recorded, but it is estimated at several thousand. At least they are much less common than the ubiquitous sea lions.

A total of six reptile species can be found on Galápagos. These include elephant-like giant tortoises, monstrous land iguanas, algae-eating marine iguanas, lava lizards, geckos and a few completely harmless snakes.

The giant tortoises, which weigh up to 300 kilos, can only be found on the Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean, except on the enchanted islands. In the Galápagos archipelago, 11 of the original 14 subspecies remain.

The tragicomic lonely George, once resettled from his home island of Pinta to the Charles Darwin Station on Santa Cruz, is the last representative of a race doomed to extinction. Three other subspecies have already become extinct, others are now bred at the famous “turtle station”.

The giant tortoises differ from island to island in their size and the shape of the shell. The somewhat smaller saddleback turtles with their longer necks and legs have adapted to the shallow dry regions in the course of evolution. Even if this turtle type prefers to eat fallen cactus cushions, it can also reach the leaves of widely branched bushes. The larger turtle type with the high dome shell, on the other hand, prefers the highland regions of the islands, where grasses and fallen fruits are the main food.

Five different breeds alone can be found in the massive volcanic cones of Isabela Island. Their respective radius of action is limited to the crater and its rims. This may even indicate that the five Isabela volcanoes were once isolated islands. The evolution of turtles has taken place in accordance with the different biotopes of the crater cones, which are separated from each other by lava and cinder deserts.

A special case is a subspecies on Española. In the 60s, there were only two males and twelve females of this turtle type alive on the island. Natural reproduction hardly took place anymore. Understandably, the animals have hardly ever met! Through incubation and careful long-term rearing, the “Charles Darwin Station” succeeded in releasing almost 700 giant tortoises of this subspecies back to Española in 1995.

Giant tortoises reach sexual maturity after about 25 years. They reproduce between January and June during the rainy season. In the second half of the year, the females then go to the dry zones to hatch their eggs. It usually takes many hours until they have dug a sufficiently deep hole with their hind legs.

During this heavy work, they urinate constantly to give the earth more suppleness. Between 2 and 20 eggs, the size of a tennis ball, are laid in the hatching pit. After the hole has been filled in again, the female retreats to the mountains. After another 4 – 8 months, the young break out of their eggshell. The temperature of the underground breeding site ultimately determines the sex of the newly hatched birds, whereby cooler temperatures usually produce males. Their only natural enemy is the Galápagos buzzard. Once they survive the first difficult years, they can reach a proud age of almost 200 years.

Land iguanas live in the arid zones of the islands of Plaza Sur, Santa Cruz, Isabela and Fernandina. A second endemic species can only be found on Santa Fé. You can see the iguanas dozing in the sun in the morning, while they seek shady places under stones or tree cacti in the midday heat. In order to be able to store their body heat at night, they sleep in self-dug caves. Their diet consists of shrubs, fruits and fallen cactus cushions, the spines of which they usually scrape out with their claws. On the other hand, very daring specimens can also be observed biting into the middle of the spines!

Unlike their distant green relatives on the Ecuadorian mainland, Galápagos land iguanas are stubbornly mindful of their territory. The yellow-colored males can react extremely aggressively to same-sex intruders. Such turf wars are threatened by vigorous nodding of the head, and sometimes end with terrifying tail and bite fights.

The grey-brown females, similar to turtles, lay 2 to 25 eggs in specially dug holes. 3 – 4 months later, the young, which are only centimetres in size, hatch from the egg. If they survive the first few years – buzzards and owls are their only mortal enemies – they can live to be over 60 years old.

When Charles Darwin landed on Santiago in 1835, he could hardly find a place where we could pitch our tent because of all the land iguanas! Today, land iguanas are completely extinct on Santiago. Rats and pigs, as well as feral dogs and cats, ate their eggs and bit the young. Goats destroyed their plant food sources.

The algae-eating marine iguanas populate almost all coasts of the Galápagos archipelago. They are considered the only reptiles in the world that have successfully adapted to life in the sea. With the soft snaking movements of their muscular tail, they can swim out for miles and take deep dives. A heartbeat four times slower in the water allows them to spend over an hour below the surface of the sea. Although tiny webbed feet have developed between the strong toes in the course of evolution, the feet are not used in diving, but only placed against the body. With the small teeth of the blunt snout, they graze on the short algae growth on the underwater rocks.

As actual land animals, marine iguanas also have no difficulties with the salinity of seawater. A gland helps them to excrete the excess salt. The secretion is expelled through the nostrils like a fine drizzle. In older animals, this has already caused veritable salt crusts to form on the antediluvian skull. In order to counteract the heat loss that occurs after an extensive dive, the cold-blooded animals like to lie lazily on the warm lava rocks in the afternoon, stretching their heads towards the equatorial sun in their hundreds.

Lava lizards populate the arid zones of almost all Galápagos Islands. Visitors encounter them everywhere at every turn. Only one species is distributed on several islands, while six other endemic species only flit around on specific islands. Lava lizards with a bright red belly pattern, by the way, are females.

There are also five endemic gecko species on Galápagos with their typical suckers on their tiny claws, as well as three species and several subspecies of Dromicus snakes, which are more afraid of humans than elephants are of mice. They are all slender and gray-brown, can grow to over a meter long, and feed primarily on lava lizards and large grasshoppers. Unfortunately, you rarely get to see the pretty little animals.

The Galápagos Islands are a paradise for birds. The seabirds occupy a very special position. They are undoubtedly the main attraction among the feathered inhabitants. Their total population is estimated at over one million. There are a total of 19 different species of seabirds, five of which are endemic. The archipelago is also populated by over 40 species of land and waders, of which 23 are endemic.

The absolute star among the seabirds is the albatross. With a wingspan of up to 2.40m, it is not only the largest bird in the Galápagos, but also the largest in the tropical waters of the eastern Pacific. The only place in the world where it can be observed breeding is the island of Española, in the far southeast of the archipelago. Over 12,000 pairs can be found here at Punta Suárez and Punta Cevallos, as well as on the south side of the flat island hill chain between April and June. Each pair of albatross produces a large egg, which is usually inexplicably rolled back and forth like a billiard ball by the parents after laying.

Albatroses are like huge transport planes. They need a long runway and have to do several laps before touching down. The flat Española Island comes in handy for their cumbersome landing maneuvers. They also have their special difficulties when it comes to being exposed. For the start, they usually have to waddle on foot to the edge of the cliffs and from there plunge headlong into the carrying updrafts.

If you want to observe the unique flightless cormorant endemic to the Galápagos at close range, you have to head to the rough secluded lava coasts of the western islands of Isabela or Fernandina. There, the down-to-earth diving birds with the powerful flippers usually live in very small colonies. After all, there are supposed to be a few hundred.

Violent volcanic eruptions, protein-rich food in abundance, and the absence of any natural enemies, have taken away this large bird’s desire to fly in the course of evolution. Its clipped wings have completely lost their function. They look like retracted paddles.

The endemic Galápagos penguin is considered the second smallest of its species in the southern hemisphere. Some of the colonies living on Isabela and Fernandina are even still located in the northern hemisphere.

Scattered groups of the frocked waterfowl can also be observed in Sullivan Bay near Bartolomé. The Humboldt Current from Antarctic climes allows this tropical penguin type to lead an undisturbed existence far away from its ancestral cold-water zone. He is the only Nordic penguin. Its closest relative is the Humboldt penguin, which lives on the coasts of Perú and Chile.

The clumsy land-walkers can reach speeds of up to 50 kilometers per hour under water. When raising their young together, however, they tend to give the impression of missing their floating ice floe on the rocky shores.

The beautiful red-billed tropic bird is relatively easy to spot during flight by its long, fine feather tail. It hunts far out in the open sea, diving from a great height like an arrow deep below the surface of the water. Loose breeding colonies of these birds can be found all year round on most islands. Only on Plaza Sur does the breeding season only last from August to February.

The “star” among the Galápagos waders is the pastel pink flamingo. It is by far the most shy bird in the archipelago and lives in seclusion in the saltwater lagoons of Isabela, Floreana, Santiago, Santa Cruz and other islands. Since it often flies from lagoon to lagoon in search of protein-rich shrimp, it is not always found at all flamingo lakes. The more than a thousand Galápagos flamingos, spread over small colonies, originally come from the West Indies.

No other animal species on the Galápagos Islands has contributed as much to the understanding of the theory of evolution as Darwin’s finches. The 13 endemic finch species – with another species on Cocos Island, 425 nautical miles northeast of Galapagos, there are even 14 – all look quite similar in color and physically. However, they differ quite clearly in their beak shape. This in turn is optimally adapted to the respective food sources. The beak serves as a practical tool for the small birds. For example, the small and large ground finches harvest medium-soft to hard seeds with their crushing nut knacher beaks. The Greater Tree Finch or Parrot-billed Darwin’s Finch, on the other hand, has a strong, sharp beak, which it uses like a metal cutting device. It can even prey on large insects under tree bark. Instead, the Warbler finch pecks the insects from the leaves as if with tweezers, while the cactus finch uses its long, powerful beak like a pair of wire pliers.

Darwin’s finches are all descended from an original species that once came to the archipelago from the mainland. This Galápagos primeval finch inhabited an unrivalled free habitat. This initially allowed it to spread unhindered to all islands. With the constantly growing finch population, the competition for daily bread began. In order to eliminate the pressure of the like-minded competition, the finches gradually began to specialize in food procurement.

Marine animals are sometimes the most spectacular thing to admire during a visit to the Galápagos. Due to the interaction of different ocean currents, the archipelago has an incredible variety of submarine life, which sometimes knows how to combine both distinctly tropical and typical Antarctic species in a single territory. Of the more than 300 species of fish, 50 alone are endemic!

Every snorkeler and diver’s neck hair stands on end when he encounters a group of whitetip sharks for the first time in his life at the Devil’s Crown, at Bartolomé, in the bay of Santa Fé, or even very close to Puerto Ayora. The cinematic, but completely harmless bites belong to the nurse shark family with their barbels. Hammerhead sharks are just as common, of which sometimes 20 or 30 can appear unexpectedly. In the northern waters of the archipelago (Isla Wolf), even schools of up to 500 specimens are not a rare sight.

All these sharks are harmless to humans. Since they find enough food in the archipelago, they are not interested in divers or dinghies. So you can dare to get quite close to them. The notorious tiger sharks, which can spread fear and terror on other tropical coasts of the world’s oceans, are almost never seen in Galápagos waters. They prefer to frolic far out in the open sea.

The majestically gliding, futuristic-looking rays are the crowning glory of every dive for many underwater sports enthusiasts. There are manta rays, eagle rays, cownose rays and stingrays. The former can reach a wingspan of up to five meters. The latter like to frolic in shallow beach waters and have already caused many a nasty injury among barefoot visitors by careless stepping.

Sea turtles can be found in many places and in many bays. The Caleta Tortuga Negra is considered ideal for observing the animals from the dinghy during the day. During the mating season between December and April, they come to the sandy beaches after dark to lay their eggs in a self-dug hollow in the shallow dunes. This strenuous process often takes half the night. Afterwards, the animals immediately seek out the vastness of the sea again and forget their offspring forever and ever. The grinding marks of the armored animals, which weigh up to 300 pounds, can usually be seen in the sand for weeks after they lay their eggs. But since the beaches are closed to visitors after 6 p.m., everyone is at least deprived of this spectacle.

After the young turtles have broken out of the half-buried eggshell, they try to reach the cooling water as quickly as possible. Only a very small percentage of the clumsy people chased into the surf have a chance of surviving only the first few minutes of existence in this gauntlet. In the air, the greedy seabirds are already lurking over the defenseless prey, and in the water, the voracious sharks are looking forward to a varied snack.

Visitors will not notice anything about the merciless survival lottery. During this time, the members of the Charles Darwin Station try their best to keep the sea turtle beaches free of tourists and to collect the fleeing young. In the breeding station they have the very best chances of survival. When they have grown up, they are left to the elements again.

The red cliff crabs immediately catch the eye when docking on the black basalt lava coasts. They usually live in large, loose groups in the intertidal zones of almost all islands. In order not to fall victim to the herons in their earliest youth, they are initially still monotonously black in color.

Immigrant and introduced animals
The endemic animals living in the Galápagos have reached the coasts of the archipelago on their own during the last three million years. They came flying and swimming from the mainland, or were carried over by winds and water currents. For example, the iguanas, which presumably clung to fallen drifted coconut palms and other driftwood during the involuntary crossing, after being surprised by a storm surge or torrential rain in search of fruit. In the same way, smaller birds probably crossed over to the islands, while the sea lions may have been forced to break all long-distance records during a persistent chase of a school of fish. A particularly strong Humboldt current could have played a decisive role in this. But the enormous distance had to mean certain death for most of the transoceanic conspecifics. The few stranded on the energy-sapping odyssey also had little chance of survival due to the prevailing environmental conditions on the fire-breathing volcanic islands.

However, the settlement of the archipelago took its God-given course. Gradually, a natural equilibrium developed among the exiles, which eventually led to the formation of harmonious communities of destiny. This is because these emigrated animals knew almost no enemies or competitive behaviour.

With the landing of the first seafarers about 400 years ago, this newly created “Noah’s Ark” balance slowly began to falter. Mice and rats were the first to leave the musty cargo holds of the anchored sailing ships. They were followed by imported domestic animals such as cows, horses, donkeys, goats, pigs, dogs and cats, which were left behind after many failed settlement attempts or fled to the hinterland. Due to the relatively rapid spread of the aliens, the native animals and plants had no time to create an effective defense system against the unexpected enemies and competitors.

The newly created foreign communities with a large population have now invaded large parts of the island kingdom. There are more than enough examples of their devastating effects on the delicate fabric of nature:

On Santiago, feral pigs dig up the freshly laid eggs of sea turtles.

On Isabela, marauding hordes of goats eat the entire vegetation bare and thus also the food plants that are vital for tortoises. This has now also led to the extinction of endemic flora and rapidly advancing soil erosion. The devastating number of wild Isabela goats is estimated at over 100,000 today!

In addition, the ancestral waterholes of the primeval giant tortoises are sometimes occupied by scattered groups of donkeys.

On all inhabited islands, cows and horses trample the rare ferns and bushes, drive away the local wildlife, and leave behind a destroyed pampa soil, as in the highlands of Santa Cruz.

Also on Santa Cruz, the only existing land iguana colony was attacked by a pack of vagabond dogs at the end of the 70s. In the massacre, about 500 tattered iguanas fell by the wayside.

Cats not only eat the small bird and reptile eggs in the dry zones, but also keep the introduced rats under control – their direct competitors in egg theft! As the youngest unwanted visitor, the particularly aggressive, “cat-devouring” Norwegian rat has now spread on two of the islands!

Accidentally and intentionally introduced animals are probably the biggest environmental problem for the islands today. Only two of the fourteen main islands are still free of foreigners. It seems that Galápagos will have to live with the many aliens in the future. Nobody has quick, practical solutions ready. Organized drive hunting safaris to exterminate the Isabela goats were always the first to come to mind. However, these hunting squads, made up of frustrated big game hunters and trigger-happy tourists, would make little sense. The climbing-happy goats gave the hunters hardly a chance in the tough, prickly thicket above the jagged lava floor. Traps set up and poisoned waterholes would only harm the endemic wildlife. The laying of kilometer-long fences would also be too unaesthetic, too expensive, and also completely ineffective against the small aliens.

Nevertheless, the Charles Darwin Station considers the eradication of the Isabela goats possible. Their track record of recent years actually speaks for this. On six smaller islands, the eradication of vegetation destroyers has been successful.

Even the difficult rat plague has now been mastered on some islands. An annual cat and rat extermination campaign carried out on Floreana in the area of the waverunner breeding grounds shows the first pleasing results today. However, at least five million US dollars are needed for the Isabela problem alone. No small amount if you are dependent on donations! The previous allocations are no longer sufficient. The national park administration, and the tireless scientists at Charles Darwin Station, face very different challenges today than they did just a few years ago.

In contrast to the Ecuadorian mainland, the Galápagos flora proves to be stepmotherly and brittle. Some of the otherwise enchanting islands are reminiscent of a Moroccan thornbush desert during the cool dry season from June to December. Tropical paradise, far from it.

There are therefore not too many plants that could immediately catch the eye of the visitor on an island cruise. Almost half of them are endemic, i.e. they indicate an isolated and completely independent development. In total, there are over 700 native plant species and subspecies. Compared to the approximately 20,000 mainland species of Ecuador, however, this is extremely sparse.

With increasing settlement, many non-native plants also came from the mainland to the Noah’s Ark Islands: crops, fruit perennials, ornamental and medicinal plants, as well as trees for rapid timber production. Unintentionally, other plants were often introduced as well. Seeds and germs, mostly accidentally hidden in luggage, have contributed to the current occurrence of over 500 different foreign plants. Today, this circumstance has a very lasting effect on the ancestral endemic flora and fauna, and even poses a serious threat to the specific ecological balance on some of the islands. The native plants are no match for the mostly aggressive “aliens”. In the daily battle for sunlight, water and nutrients, they often lose out.

Cinchona trees, which were introduced decades ago on Santa Cruz and San Cristóbal, are now displacing the endemic unique miconia vegetation at altitudes above 500m. Guava trees are spreading faster and faster to entire forests on four of the uninhabited islands. The monogamous, endangered birds use the same nesting box for their entire lives. If this is buried for some reason, they dig a new room in the same place. If they can no longer locate their ancestral breeding site, they become homeless and die. Once on Floreana, the lantana seeds were in turn spread on the island by Darwin’s finches and introduced rats.
The flora of Galápagos is divided into five to seven different vegetation zones, which are primarily dependent on the altitudes: the saltwater-resistant plants in the direct coastal area (up to 20 meters in altitude), the bush landscape of the dry zone (up to over 100m), the partly foggy-humid transition zone (150-300m), the year-round green and rainy Scalesia jungle zone (250-600m), the Miconia scrub zone on Santa Cruz and San Cristóbal (up to over 100m). 700m), as well as the windy pampas grass zone in the highest island locations. However, most Galápagos visitors have very little opportunity to explore the mountainous regions in the interior of the islands. In the case of organized boat tours, the piers are mainly limited to visitor locations in the coastal vegetation zones.

One of the most striking exponents of the flora widespread on Galápagos for visitors is often the green mangrove forests in flat coastal areas. All of the four species of these dense respiratory and stilt root networks found in Ecuador line Santa Cruz, Isabela, Fernadina, San Cristóbal and many other islands of the archipelago, mostly tidal beach shore zones. These include the black mangrove with its yellow-brown asymmetrical fruits, the reddish branches and fleshy leaves of the red mangrove, the white mangrove dotted on the underside of the leaves and the small-leaved button mangrove.

Other typical plants of the nearby coastal region are the salt bush with its long drooping leaves and yellow-green flowers, the dense low mats of the solstice, the slender thorny branches of the Lesser Fenughorn with its club-shaped leaves, as well as the equally shallow-growing beach winds and beach grass.

Particularly impressive are the wonderful red coral bush networks on the stony Plaza Island. This plant forms almost Nordic-looking carpet mats, which can have very different magnificent shades depending on the season.

In the water- and humus-poor coastal areas of the islands, there is a whole range of plants that have been able to successfully resist the annual dry periods in the course of evolution.

Thanks to widely branched surface roots, these plants can absorb a lot of water during the rainy season and store it in the trunk and branches for the dry months from June to the end of December. During this brittle period, the shallow root system loses its importance.

The mighty Opuntia tree cacti have grown into a kind of landmark of Galápagos. They have adapted to the given environmental conditions in a unique way. There are six endemic species of these fig or opuntie cacti, which can grow up to 9m high. The cactus cushions are turned towards the sun’s rays like twisted parabolic antennas. Their pointed, shadowless spines protect the meat from voracious egg-laying predators. The brown tree bark, covered with smooth wax, not only repels the climbing iguanas, but also reduces unnecessarily evaporating body water due to winds and strong equatorial UV radiation to a minimum. A vital component for cacti for photosynthesis!

The rarer columnar or candelabra cacti, up to 6m high, on the other hand, consist of only one endemic species, which has since been split up by evolution. They are particularly easy to discover during a walk in the lagoon area around Puerto Villamil on Isabela.

The lava cactus, which thrives on naked lava rock, can only be understood as an erotic whim of nature. It usually occurs in erectile groups, and can be admired, for example, in the moon-like volcanic landscape of Bartolomé.

The most common representative of the dry zone, however, is the Palo Santo tree, which often forms entire forests in the nearby coastal areas, and whose aromatic resin smells very strongly of frankincense. With its smooth, shiny bark, the palo santo belongs to the white gum or balsam trees. While it does not bear a single leaf in the driest months, it wraps itself in a light green robe during the rainy season.

Other typical, partly endemic plant species in the nearby coastal area are the small Muyuyo tree with its yellow flowers, the poisonous Manzanillo tree, the spot-causing Chalá bush, the parasitic Galápagos silk, the unruly Tribulus, the nodular dry Tree of Destiny, the white-headed parrot leaf, the pedunculate-flowered lantana, the pointed-leaved Parkinsonia on Baltra Island, the prickly Algarrobo acacia at Tagus Cove on Isabela, Peruvian Orchid the Suárez headland on Española, grey-bearded coldenias and bonsai tree sunflowers on Bartolomé, as well as an almost leafless impenetrable thorny scrub called Scutia Pauciflora Rhamnaceae.

The seductively spreading Galápagos passion flower, an originally introduced, highly hairy climbing plant with edible fruits, is considered a pest in contrast to the endemic Galápagos tomato, as it blocks sunlight from native wild plants.

At wetter altitudes of 150 to 300 m, in addition to coral trees, bearded braids and liverworts, parasitic epiphytes catch the eye, especially on trees. In this transition zone, the frequency of precipitation increases in contrast to the dry coastal area. Of course, this also changes the plant world noticeably. However, this so-called transition zone is hardly distinguishable from the higher-lying “Scalesia zone” for the layman.

In hilly and rainy locations of over 200 to 600 metres above sea level, foggy Scalesia forests surrounded by bromeliads and ferns predominate. There are a total of 15 endemic tree and bush species of these composite plants on Galápagos. Some of them – albeit very small – can also be found in the coastal region.

Since the high-altitude Scalesia zone has the most fertile soils in the archipelago, it has unfortunately also been used intensively for agriculture. This is particularly evident in San Cristóbal and Santa Cruz, where large parts of this forest area have already disappeared, never to be seen again. This is also increasingly affecting other residents of the national park. During the dry season, the foraging giant tortoises migrate to the evergreen jungle area, which is unmistakable by the constant chirping of birds.

Only in these higher altitudes of Galápagos has a tropical flora similar to the mainland developed. For example, the small red flycatcher living there, also known by the magical name Ruby Tyrant, hardly differs from its fluttering mainland relatives.

On the southern slopes of the islands, both the transition zones and the scalesia zones are much lower than on the rainy shadow sides of the northern slopes due to the prevailing winds and stronger cloud formation. The drive from the airport over the undulating ridges to Puerto Ayora, across the island of Santa Cruz, gives the visitor a glimpse of these little-visited vegetation zones of the archipelago.

Above the forest region, at altitudes of over 500 meters, the pampa-like mountain region begins. Meter-high miconia bushes, isolated tree ferns, as well as extensive swamp and elephant grasses, characterize this rainy green zone, especially on San Cristóbal and Santa Cruz. On Isabela, the tough thicket even reaches the crater edges of the volcanic giants, which are up to 1,700m high.

Curiously, the tropical-subtropical highlands have more endemic plant and animal species than the coastal dry and splash water zone combined. For example, the habitat of two very rare bird species, the Galápagos dwarf rail and the bright-beaked snarl, is limited to this pampa zone.

The first visitors to the Galápagos Islands were probably the seaworthy cultures of the Manteños or Huancavilcas, who came over from the Ecuadorian mainland on large balsa rafts. Ceramic splinters found on the island of Santiago, the Bahía Ballena on Santa Cruz, and on the black beach of Floreana can testify to this. However, it remains doubtful whether the former coastal inhabitants found their way back from the oceanic islands. With the prevailing current conditions, this undertaking was almost impossible.

Around 1485, the Inca Tupac Yupangui is said to have already headed for two of the islands, Nina Chumbi and Hahua Chumbi. According to the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, the horse skin brought back, which was still in Cuzco 100 years later, was actually a sea lion skin.

The tenth Inca emperor is also said to have come across a bronze crescent-shaped Manteño pedestal there. But both the mysterious fur and the chieftain’s chair could just as well have come from a stretch of coast on the continent.

A lull in the wind drove the first European, Fray Tomás de Berlanga, to the coasts of the archipelago in 1535 with the strong Humboldt counter-current. The then Archbishop of Panamá, who (like most animals and plants before him) involuntarily stranded on the islands, declared the stony islands “full of sea lions and turtles” to be “completely uninhabitable”. After giving up the desperate search for drinking water, he just reached the Peruvian coast again. Through the discovery of the bishop in 1574, the archipelago could be marked on a world map for the first time – under the name “Islands of the Turtles” or Archipelago de los Galopegoes.

The Spaniard Diego de Rivadeneira gave them the enchanting name Islas Encantadas in 1546. The deserter from Pizarro’s army fled north from Perú with twelve men and a stolen ship, and was drifted to the islands, as was Berlanga. Due to the high error rate of the navigation instruments used at that time, the remote, often cloud-shrouded “phantom islands” had the reputation of bewitching themselves from the surface from time to time, or making themselves invisible. Rivadeneira not only found fresh water on one of the islands, but also mentioned the “Galápagos falcon” for the first time in his report.

Since the end of the 16th century, English, French and Dutch pirates and buccaneers, among them the legendary Francis Drake, Captain Morgan and William Dampier, used the islands as a treasure cache and base for raids on Spanish sailors who transported the last Inca gold of the colonies to Europe. The islands also had to serve as a starting point for many a bloodthirsty attack on the port city of Guayaquil. The volcanic caves on Santiago and Floreana served as an ideal hiding place for the pirates. In 1684, the buccaneer William Ambrose Cowley named the islands after British kings, counts and admirals, and made the first detailed map of the archipelago. The English sailor Alexander Selkirk, who was picked up by the pirate Woods Rodgers far off the Chilean coast in 1709, later provided the writer Daniel Defoe with the basis for his famous Robinson Crusoe novel. Three months after his miraculous rescue, Selkirk himself commanded his own corsair ship, with which he attacked Guayaquil and then divided up the rich booty on one of the Galápagos Islands.

In 1793, the British captain James Colnett erected a curious wooden barrel on Floreana, which is still used as a mail delivery for sailors and tourists to this day. With Colnett, the first whalers and sealers arrived on the islands at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. The number of fishing vessels massacring in the Galápagos region rose to over 2,000 in the middle of the last century. The fur seal colonies have practically not yet been able to recover from the slaughter. It is also estimated that over 200,000 giant tortoises fell victim to the hunters, 15,000 on Floreana alone. The unfortunate armored animals, which were simply stacked on top of each other below deck and turned on their backs, were able to survive for months without water and food despite this practice, and thus constantly supplied the crew with fresh meat. Three of the unique turtle species are now extinct as a result, while others have been decimated extremely badly.

The first inhabitant of Galápagos was the Irishman Patrick Watkins, who was abandoned on Floreana in 1807. He was mainly engaged in the cultivation of vegetables, which he exchanged for whisky from the passing whaling ships.

Almost two years after Ecuador’s declaration of independence, the islands were incorporated into Ecuadorian territory on February 12, 1832 by Coronel Ignacio Hernandez. The first governor of Galápagos, General José Villamil, had the utopian intention of founding a new ideal society on Floreana. He officially gave the islands Spanish names in addition to their already existing English names. However, his dream of a distant paradise turned into an anarchist convict colony after a short time.

The cruel Manuel Julio Cobos, after a first colonization attempt in 1869, moved the prison camp to El Progreso on San Cristóbal in 1888. A lucrative sugarcane industry was established under lashes. Work-shy he had the rats eat alive in an iron kettle heated by the sun. After continuing to rape the wives of the prisoners, he was hacked to pieces by a machete-wielding Colombian in 1904.

In the autumn of 1835, the most famous visitor to the Enchanted Islands, the “HMS Beagle”, which was subordinate to Captain Fitzroy – an English student named Charles Darwin – was staying on the Enchanted Islands. The budding naturalist and ornithologist, who had been classified as unimaginative by his teachers, traveled despite his father’s strict prohibition – and only because two other passengers had cancelled at short notice. On Galápagos, Darwin spent five weeks studying plants and animals, which he described as cyclopean beasts, among other things. The term evolution was never used by the deeply religious Victorian in this regard. At first, he simply denied a progressive development of species based on a variety of momentums.

Between 1875-78, the German geologist and naturalist Theodor Wolf visited Galápagos twice. He found out that the islands must be of volcanic-oceanic origin, and therefore have no connection to the South American continent. The highest Galápagos elevation, a 1,707m high volcano on Isabela, as well as a small rocky island in the far northwest of the island kingdom, bear his name today.

On the occasion of Columbus’ 400th anniversary of his discovery of America in 1892, the archipelago was given the name “Archipiélago de Colón”. A year later, the honorable Guayaquileño Don Antonio Gil initiated the first reasonably successful settlement attempt on Isabela. The colony survived thanks to the sale of beef and the sulfur mines at the Sierra Negra volcano. A Norwegian group of settlers, who built a fish can factory on Floreana in 1926, gave up this project a little later. Only a rusty cauldron remained as a silent witness. A salt mine in the former Puerto Egas in James Bay on Santiago also only existed for a short time (1924-30).

Among the other adventure travelers who helped the islands gain their magical attraction was the American explorer William Beebe. His visit to the Galápagos in 1923 inspired him to write the world bestseller “Galápagos – World’s End”. An enthusiastic reader of the book was the German dropout dentist and “eco-pioneer” Friedrich Ritter, who settled on Floreana in 1929 with his practice assistant Dore Strauch. In 1932, they were followed by the Wittmer family from Cologne, who still live on the island today. The first luxury yachts of eccentric American multimillionaires appeared on the black beach of Floreana. Wagner de Bosquet’s young German baroness also reached the exotic island on one of these first tourist ships – accompanied by her two lovers Lorenz and Philipson. Her initial plans for an extraordinary luxury hotel failed. After all that remained of it was a hut made of crooked boards and rusted iron, the blue-blooded diva declared herself Empress of Floreana.

During World War II, Baltra Island was used by the American Air Force as a base to monitor the Panama Canal. During this period, the gringos not only ensured the complete extinction of the land iguanas on Baltra, but also bombed parts of other islands such as the rock needle on Bartolomé for training purposes. An encrusted, not exploded explosive device has since adorned the top of the brittle natural monument.

On July 4, 1959, 95% of the archipelago was declared a national park. In the same year, the penal camp opened in 1944 on Isabela Island was blown up. The remaining “Wall of Tears”, built by 200 prisoners from basalt chunks, can still be visited. The only survivor of the former exile colony is now said to be enjoying his retirement somewhere in Puerto Ayora (Santa Cruz).

In 1964 the Charles Darwin Station was founded, and in 1969 the ekuad. Tourism company Metropolitain Touring organized boat trips to Galápagos with the “Lina-A” yacht. Twenty years earlier, however, the German immigrant Fritz Angermeyer had already undertaken the first sailing trips for rich tourists on the “Nixi” yacht.

UNESCO declared the islands a “World Heritage of Humanity” in 1978. Today, almost 60,000 visitors from all over the world come to the archipelago every year. More than 20,000 inhabitants now live in the towns of Puerto Ayora (Santa Cruz) and the provincial capital Puerto Baquerizo Moreno (San Cristóbal).

Overpopulation and human intervention are putting the ecological balance to a new test. The government is to put thick barriers on migration from the mainland to the islands in the future.

With the freighters Piqueros and San Cristóbal, about 15 new cars arrive in Puerto Ayora and Puerto Baquerizo Moreno every month. The local fishing boat fleet alone has increased tenfold in the last five years.

The illegal fishing of the “potency-enhancing” sea cucumbers (pepinos del mar), whose meat is sold as a delicacy to Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, could have the most serious impact on the unique underwater world in the future. The “garbage” devouring sea cucumbers eat algae and dead microorganisms. Other organisms live on their larvae, on which all animal species on Galápagos ultimately feed – and Galápagos ultimately stands or falls with the entire Ecuadorian tourism volume. It is to be hoped that this destructive activity will be stopped in the future.