Geographical Location           

The islands are located roughly 1000 km straight west of mainland Ecuador. There are 19 major islands and many smaller islets, whose land mass together covers 7880 km2 over an area of 50 000  km2 of Pacific ocean. Isabela is the largest of the islands, having an area of 4590 km2. It also boasts the highest elevation in the archipelago with Wolf volcano reaching 1645 m.

 Geological History           

The islands now called Galapagos are of recent volcanic origin (click to volcano) having risen out of the sea a few million years ago. A geological theory called "Hot Spot" tries to explain their creation by imagining huge magma blocks escaping through an opening in the earth's crust and building themselves up over millions of years. Two major tectonic plates meet in the vicinity and spread or move away from each other thus creating the spaces for those mantle plumes to form. Isabela and Fernandina islands are the most recent ones with less than a million years of life. The southeastern islands of Española boast of the oldest rocks and this coincides with the direction of the movements of the Cocos and Nazca Plates. The islands were never connected to any continent but it is believed that an eroded underwater ridge called the Carnegie Ridge was once above water and is part of the same geological event. This ridge is halfway between the current islands and the mainland and would explain more satisfactorily, how the animals and plants could have arrived on Galapagos.

 Climate of the Islands           

The richness of the marine world and the varied ecosystems of the islands are due to the mixture of cold, nutrient-rich waters brought by the Humboldt stream and warm water by the El Niño current. That also is the reason for the two distinct seasons the islands enjoy. From July to January the cold Humboldt current has more force and pushes out the warm waters, hence the water and air temperatures are cooler, with little precipitation but sometimes foggy conditions called by locals "garua". In the other half of the year, warm waters take over, so you have warmer air and water temperatures with occasionally rain showers. Another characteristics of the climate are pronounced yearly changes. No year is the same and huge differences of precipitations occur with some islands receiving no rain in one year and being deluged with water in another one.