Galápagos Islands

The Galápagos Islands owe their name to the giant tortoises found nowhere else on Earth, "galápago" being an old Spanish word for saddle, a reference to the shape of some of the tortoises' shells. Those tortoises, along with marine iguanas, sea lions, and blue-footed boobies, share a striking trait: almost none of them show fear when approached, a direct consequence of evolving for millions of years on islands with no native land predators.

That undisturbed evolutionary laboratory is exactly what let Charles Darwin, visiting in 1835 aboard the HMS Beagle, observe how finches and tortoises varied distinctly from island to island — observations that became central evidence for the theory of evolution by natural selection he published decades later.

Roughly 97 percent of the islands' land area is protected as national park, and the regulations governing visits are genuinely strict: certified naturalist guides are required for most excursions, visitor numbers to specific sites are capped, and touching or feeding any animal carries real penalties, rules the islands' fame and fragility both make necessary.

The archipelago's volcanic origin remains active in places, and the resulting mix of young, barren lava fields alongside older, more vegetated islands gives different islands genuinely distinct landscapes and wildlife within a fairly compact area — a variety that multi-day cruises are built specifically to cover.

Marine life gets equal billing with the islands' famous land animals — the Galápagos marine iguana is the only iguana species on Earth that forages in the ocean, diving to graze on algae, a behavior found in no other lizard anywhere, and one more example of how isolated evolution here produced species with no real equivalent elsewhere.