What I especially love about my Galapagos vacation is being on a small boat with about 14 other tourists and 9 crew members. That all means that you can go to quite places that are a bit out of the beaten track.

Although the boat is small, it beats the massive luxury cruises that brings you to yet another Galapagos tourist attraction.

How to eat a cactus

Every day we saw different Islands: one looks like the moon, the next looks like a volcano, the next is filled with flamingo’s, the next has real trees and the next only has one cactus next to the other…

Galapagos wildlife: iguana eating a cactus

And of course this variety leads to an equal immense variety of Galapagos wildlife animals: try to avoid the spikes when eating a cactus… It’s just amazing and as always: you are sitting next to the animal

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As a child I was fascinated by birds, so it was only a matter of time that I found a book in the library about Galapagos finches.

My uncle had a lot of birds in huge cages outdoors, and I loved to look at his finches… yet when I saw the ones from the book in the library, "I wanted more"…

Darwins finches

So imagine that finally in school in biology class my teacher started to talk about Galapagos. Me ready to see even more birds, our teachers showed us a picture of Darwin…

Charles Darwin the theory of evolution

So there I am: anticipating lots and lots of pictures or at least those scientific looking drawings like so:

Darwins Finchs : at least some interesting drawings…

Can you imagine how bored I felt: anticipating beautiful pictures of Galapagos wildlife and in stead getting old boring history pictures: who is Charles Darwin, the biography of Charles Darwin… especially we had to remember the name of the boat in which he made his travel to Galapagos… jeeeez…: what do I care?

That’s when I said: "if I was the teacher: I would go on a Galapagos vacation and make sure to bring some real pictures back to show…".

So for all the things I said when I was a kid, at least I kept this promise … Galapagos is a place "untouched" by humans: it shows how much more variety there could be in a place where there are no humans.

Charles Darwin the theory of evolution

Galapagos should tell us more about our future than about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and specialization.

• The less people like on Galapagos: the more diversity of wildlife.
• The more people: the less divers animals around ("only cats and dogs")

So the more people will lead to an earth with only a few species left… a much different prospect than Darwin’s evolution of the species in more diversity: we humans are just doing the opposite with our earth.

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Galapagos Islands lie on the equator 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, and it is a world-renowned travel destination site that is totally unique and un-spoilt. I could never dream about any of the plants I saw on the Galapagos Islands!

Cutleaf Daisy: Punta Cormorante, Floreana Island, Galapagos Islands

How unique is this cutleaf daisy? If you want to look it up on the net, look for Lecocarpus pinnatifidus It gets its name for the deeply and irregularly lobed margins of its leaves. It is one of the rarest plants in the Galapagos and of the entire world if you ask me.

Nothing will prepare you for the abundance of wildlife and the beautiful surroundings of these islands that is about 50000 square km in area.

You can get up close and personal with the wildlife there especially the marine creatures that view visitors with total disinterest.

There are plenty of ways to see the islands and you can embark on a cruise or a combination of land and cruise tour like I did to take in as much as you can of this incredible place.

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