Cultural Tour of Galápagos Islands

Most international flights connect to the Galápagos via Quito or Guayaquil. A night in Quito is worthwhile — Ecuador's capital is one of South America's finest colonial cities: the best-preserved historic center in Latin America, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of Spanish colonial churches and plazas at 2,850 meters altitude, and the specific light of a highland Andean city that the Flemish painter Escher lived here for 18 months to capture. The Church of San Francisco (1535) is the oldest church in South America. The Pululahua Geobotanical Reserve 30km north of Quito is an inhabited volcanic crater with extraordinary biodiversity. Overnight in Quito at the Casa Gangotena or Hotel Plaza Grande for first-class colonial city hotels.

• ✦ Quito UNESCO historic center — best-preserved colonial city in Latin America
• ✦ Church of San Francisco — the oldest in South America (1535)
• ✦ Altitude at 2,850m — acclimatize before flying to the Galápagos
• ✦ Pululahua inhabited volcanic crater nearby

Fly from Quito to Baltra or San Cristóbal in the Galápagos (2 hours). The experience of landing begins on the tarmac: Galápagos sea lions occasionally lie on the runway. Transfer to your live-aboard expedition yacht or your land-based hotel on Santa Cruz Island. Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz is the main inhabited town in the Galápagos and has the Charles Darwin Research Station — where the giant tortoise breeding program that pulled the species back from extinction is headquartered, and where famous Lonesome George (the last Pinta Island tortoise, who died in 2012) spent his final years. The tortoise enclosures have dozens of individuals from different island races at various ages. Your first afternoon walk near Puerto Ayora will likely produce your first encounter with Galápagos wildlife: land iguanas, marine iguanas on the lava shoreline, and Galápagos sea lions on the beach benches.

• ✦ Charles Darwin Research Station — giant tortoise breeding program
• ✦ Lonesome George memorial — the last Pinta Island tortoise
• ✦ First marine iguana encounter on the lava shoreline
• ✦ Galápagos sea lions on the Puerto Ayora benches

A day trip by panga (small boat) to North Seymour Island is the Galápagos' most accessible wildlife-concentrated excursion. North Seymour has the largest colony of magnificent frigatebirds in the Galápagos — the males inflate their brilliant red gular sac to a volleyball-sized balloon during courtship, a display as extraordinary as any in the bird world. The trail (1.9km loop) also passes through a blue-footed booby colony — the males perform their mating dance (lifting each bright blue foot in an exaggerated walk) directly in front of snorkeling visitors, within arm's reach. Land iguanas, Galápagos sea lions, and swallow-tailed gulls nest all along the trail. The water around North Seymour has Galápagos sea lions underwater, spinning around snorkelers in a play behavior that is one of the world's most joyful wildlife encounters.

• ✦ Magnificent frigatebirds with red balloon gular sac inflated
• ✦ Blue-footed booby mating dance within arm's reach
• ✦ Galápagos sea lion underwater play while snorkeling
• ✦ Land iguanas and swallow-tailed gulls nesting along the trail

The highlands of Santa Cruz Island, 30 minutes from Puerto Ayora, is where wild Galápagos giant tortoises live freely in private farms and in the El Chato Tortoise Reserve. Walking across a meadow and encountering a 500-pound, 150-year-old tortoise moving at the unhurried pace of an animal that has no predators and no reason to hurry is one of the world's most profoundly affecting wildlife experiences. The tortoises eat, sleep, and walk with complete indifference to human presence — you can sit two feet away and watch them for as long as you like. The lava tunnels in the Santa Cruz highlands are extraordinary — tubes 1-2 meters in diameter, created when the lava surface cooled and hardened while the interior continued flowing, creating hollow channels up to 1km long that you can walk through with a headlamp.

• ✦ Wild giant tortoises in El Chato Reserve — 150-year-old animals in their natural habitat
• ✦ Sitting two feet from a 500-pound tortoise with no fear response
• ✦ Santa Cruz lava tunnels — walk through solidified lava flow channels
• ✦ Tortoise migration between highland and lowland habitats

Española (Hood Island) at the southernmost point of the Galápagos is considered by most naturalists to be the finest wildlife site in the archipelago. The waved albatross colony (the world's only tropical albatross species, nesting only on Española) returns April-December — the albatross pairs perform the most elaborate courtship dance in the bird world, clicking bills, waving heads, and screaming together in a ritual that lasts days. The blowhole at Punta Suarez shoots a column of sea water through a lava arch 25 feet in the air. Nazca boobies, sea lions, marine iguanas, lava lizards, and Española mockingbirds (so unafraid they will land on your shoe) are all present. The Gardner Bay on the eastern side of the island has one of the most beautiful beaches in the Galápagos — white coral sand and a Galápagos sea lion colony that barely moves aside for swimmers.

• ✦ Waved albatross courtship dance — world's only tropical albatross (April-December)
• ✦ Española blowhole — 25-foot sea water column through lava arch
• ✦ Gardner Bay sea lion colony on white coral sand
• ✦ Española mockingbirds landing on your shoe

Isabela is the largest island in the Galápagos and one of the most geologically dramatic: five active shield volcanoes, lava fields that are geologically recent, and the most extraordinary tidal wetlands. At Tagus Cove, Darwin carved his name (or so legend says) and the cliff walls are covered in similar inscriptions from passing whalers and pirates over the centuries. The snorkeling at Los Tintoreras islets involves swimming over sleeping white-tipped reef sharks in a lava channel, with penguins diving alongside. The Galápagos penguin — the world's most northern penguin species, cooled by the Humboldt Current — is one of the rarest penguins on earth. Flightless cormorants on the lava shoreline spread their vestigial wings to dry in the wind — the world's only flightless cormorant, on only two Galápagos islands.

• ✦ Galápagos penguins at Los Tintoreras — the world's most northern penguin
• ✦ White-tipped reef sharks sleeping in the lava channel
• ✦ Flightless cormorant drying its vestigial wings on the lava shoreline
• ✦ Isabela's five active volcanoes from the boat

A final morning on whatever island your itinerary ends near. If near Santa Cruz, Puerto Ayora's morning market and a final sea lion encounter on the waterfront benches is the correct farewell. The flight back to Quito takes 2 hours; international connections depart from Quito or Guayaquil. Take home Galápagos chocolate (excellent cacao grown on the inhabited islands), a piece of lava rock, and the specific memory of sitting two feet from a 150-year-old giant tortoise who regards your presence with complete philosophical indifference.

• ✦ Final Puerto Ayora morning market and waterfront sea lions
• ✦ Galápagos chocolate from locally grown cacao
• ✦ Flight from Baltra or San Cristóbal to Quito and international connection