Galapagos Wildlife Spotlight Series – Wildlife as a Tool for Cruise Planning

On any Galapagos cruise, even on shorter 4 and 5 day options, you will see a tremendous amount and variety of wildlife. Trying to figure out the “best” wildlife is a bit tricky, because all the visitor sites have unique charms and the place is kind of an embarrassment of riches.

With the unique and amazing nature of the Galapagos, it’s not surprising that lots of the Galapagos wildlife have seemingly stamped their feet, claws and fins on the Galapagos walk of fame.

You could call Giant Tortoises the Sean Conneries (perhaps Brad Pitts if you prefer) or the Beatles of the Galapagos, because they are the icons, the legendary faces that everyone knows.

In fact, they (along with Darwin himself, perhaps) are the face of the Galapagos Islands. Other red-carpet-regulars are Galapagos Penguins, Galapagos Green Sea Turtles, Galapagos Sea Lions, Marine and Land Iguanas and other types of unique birds like Boobies, the Waved Albatross, Flightless Cormorants and Darwin’s famous Finches.

And yes, this is just a small sampling of the full cast of characters in the Galapagos Islands. They may not all be A-listers, but they are plentiful and each interesting in many ways.

While there is lots of overlap with respect to many animals in the Galapagos (meaning you can see them in lots of different places in the Islands, and will probably see them on any visit), there are certain places where there are colonies of a particular animal – making sightings more likely – or where they almost always are found (and even animals that are endemic to just one particular island), so I thought I’d take a little time to give a bit of a “(wild)lifestyles of the rich and famous” overview via a series of posts, starting with the Galapagos Green Turtle. Why the Green Turtle first? Well, because it’s my favorite, of course.

To read about the Galapagos Green Turtle, you can view the post here (click to view)