Galápagos Islands

The Galápagos Islands are an archipelago of 127 volcanic islands, islets and rocks in the eastern Pacific Ocean, straddling the equator about 485 nautical miles west of mainland South America and forming Ecuador's Galápagos Province. The islands sit above the Galápagos hotspot on the Nazca Plate, where a mantle plume has driven volcanism for at least 20 million years and possibly as long as 90 million years, and nine of the archipelago's volcanoes remain active, having erupted two dozen times between 1961 and 2011. Isabela, the largest of the 19 major islands, covers 4,588 square kilometers within a total land area of about 8,000 square kilometers. The islands are known for endemic wildlife such as giant tortoises, Darwin's finches and marine iguanas, observations that helped shape Charles Darwin's theory of evolution during his 1835 visit.