I visited this WHS in May/June 2019. I arrived in Baltra Seymour GPS airport from Quito and I was based on Santa Cruz island for 9 nights/10 days going out on 8 different boat trips to different uninhabited islands and the inhabited island of Floreana.

All the praise the Galapagos Islands receive is fully justified and my already high expectations were met. It is a very fragile natural environment which can easily be lost or degraded in no time (as has already happened in the not so distant past) but I must say that on the whole the Ecuador government and national park management system are doing a very good job to control and manage the effects of tourism on the Galapagos islands.

The most outstanding feature of the Galapagos is the fact that most wildlife is very tame and not afraid of humans. Actually more often than not, the wildlife was very curious to see us and considered us just as another species NOT as a predator. This is true on land as well as in the marine environment. Birdwatching enthusiasts with very big telescope lenses will immediately find out that such expensive equipment is almost useless here - a good zoom might come in handy out at sea but most species will be literally at arm's length.

Everyday was a different highlight for me as I was lucky with the weather and no boat trip got cancelled. Moreover, I had tried to vary boat trips which I grouped from 3 main categories I had researched over the internet or combine different activities on the same day. 1) Snorkelling highlights - Pinzon Island, Punta Carrion at Santa Cruz Island, Pinnacle Rock at Bartolome Island, La Loberia at Floreana island and Kicker Rock at San Cristobal Island; 2) Birdwatching highlights - North Seymour Island, South Plaza Island, Daphne Mayor Island, Espanola Island 3) Fauna and Landscape highlights - Santa Fe Island, Floreana Island, Bartolome Island (photo) and Isabela/Fernandina Islands (volcanoes and adventure activities).

From the outset, I decided to skip the largest island of Isabela (and neighboring Fernandina) as I wanted to be based on one island for all of my stay and planned to cover most of the species present on Isabela elsewhere (flamingoes in Santa Cruz, penguins around Bartolome). Having visited Vanuatu and a number of active volcanoes in Indonesia relatively recently and having experienced my fair share of earthquakes and eruptions (even though I was woken by a strong 1 minute earthquake while in Quito too!), I decided to give Isabela a miss, even though that meant missing out on the flightless cormorant and the rare pink iguana. Another island I decided to skip which was more difficult to leave out as a birdwatcher was Espanola Island (missed out on the waved albatross). The northern islands of Genovesa, Marchesa and Pinta can only be visited by liveaboard boat trips.

The rest of the islands I visited practically gave me repeated opportunities to enjoy the limited variety of birdlife, land fauna and marine life of the Galapagos Islands. My personal highlights were swimming with sea lions, watching a pregnant sea lion give birth and feeding its pups, swimming with penguins, watching all the different species of land, marine and hybrid iguanas especially the red and green ones of Floreana, being escorted out of a lagoon with pups by a huge (and loud!) alpha male sea lion, etc. Other unforgettable moments such as swimming with sharks, rays, turtles, etc. I had already experienced elsewhere. This is really one of the very top WHS on the list and one of the easiest (not cheapest) nature WHS to cover well without too much effort.