Islands of Understanding
There are places in the world whose name carries meaning well beyond mere geography. A thousand kilometres off the west coast of Ecuador lie the islands of the Galapagos Archipelago – 24 specks of geology straddling the equator that have become, not only an epithet for the origin of life on earth, but one of the last bastions of hope for nature's troubled future.
To me the islands of the Galapagos had always sounded like a naturalist’s heaven. To the crew of the Beagle, who called there in 1835, they were little short of hell. But this did not prevent the young Charles Darwin, one of those on board, making observations that led him to transform the way we think about the natural world. His concept, however incomplete, of adaptation and evolution by natural selection was a conjecture of such intellectual power that it still guides modern thinking. With such profound consequences, I was astonished to learn that Darwin's visit had been cursory – a mere 28 days and only about eight of those on land. 
Over a century-and-a-half later, my visit was also tantalisingly brief. For seven days I lived aboard a small well-appointed cruise liner called the M/V Galapagos Explorer II with 99 other passengers. For three to four hours twice a day we were transferred by panga (rubber dingy) to different islands to watch the drama of the Galapagos wildlife unfold.
If I'd only been able to land on Espanola Island, our first port of call, and nowhere else I would still have considered the long flight from Auckland, through Santiago in Chile, Quito in Ecuador and then out to the islands to have been worthwhile.
We were welcomed to the island by a gaggle of sea lions swirling and spy hopping around the dinghy and following us up the beach. Others littered the sand, lying like furry sacks and so relaxed with our presence that, apart from the flies and the overwhelming smell of rotting fish, I felt like lying down beside them. One mother had just given birth and a mocking bird – a brazen little opportunist – was pecking delightedly at the placenta. Espanola reverberated with the moaning, barking, whistling grunting, shrieking and croaking of its wild inhabitants, which sounded like some bizarre alien orchestra tuning up. To arrive there was an incomparable experience.
Over the next few days, ashore on these tiny specks of land, we were totally seduced by the profusion of wildlife, so close sometimes we were in danger of treading on a marine iguana or the nest of a blue-footed booby. We swam with sea turtles, watched a pair of albatross only metres from where we sat, marveled at the giant tortoises, roosting frigate birds, owls, petrels, penguins and Sally Lightfoot crabs.
The seven-day cruise passed a thousand times faster than a sprinting tortoise. All good things must come to an end, of course, but I was far from ready for the flight back to Ecuador on the mainland. And like any body else who has set foot on those intriguing islands, I will never be able to get them out of my mind.
On MV Galapagos Explorer11 choose a 4, 5 or 7 day cruises any time of the year. www.mvgalapagosexplorer.com
Lan Airlines flies through Santiago de Chile for a connecting flight to Quito in Ecuador
www.lan.com