The Galapagos Islands are a famous cluster of volcanic islands spread on the either side of the Equator in the Pacific Ocean.
It consists of 13 major islands, six smaller islands and a group of islets, lying about a 1000 kilometres west of the mainland Ecuador. The archipelago covers a total land area of 8,010 square kilometres which scatters over 59570 square kilometres of ocean. The Galapagos National Park forms a part of the islands.
Isabella Island is the largest of the islands in Galapagos. It is around 132 kilometres long and constitutes more than half of the archipelago. Mount Azul, which is the highest point of Galapagos, is situated in Isabella.
History says that the scenic island cluster was discovered by the bishop of Panama, Tomas de Berlanga in 1535. It gained international attention after the visit of the English naturalist Charles Darwin in 1835. It was the unique fauna of the islands that contributed to the groundbreaking theories on natural selection presented in Darwin’s work ‘On the Origin of Species’ in1859.