Ecuador and Galapagos travel: a love story

When you book a Galapagos cruise tour vacation you are actually embarking on an Ecuadorian holiday…

It’s widely believed that the Galapagos were actually “up for grabs” at some point, and when Ecuador took possession on them, they were considered nothing but a wasteland. The idea of Galapagos holiday travel was unthinkable then. Who would want to visit a handful of desert islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

This is precisely what Melville saw Galapagos travel as, and how he portrayed it to the American reading public. Although people mention Melvillle proudly when speaking of the emblematic historical figures who’ve visited the islands, his words are nothing of what Galapagos cruise tour vacation promoters would like to be recommending for prospective visitors.

To bid for the Galapagos was probably a little like bidding for a portion of Antartica  (of which Ecuador also has a slice). Not even low-life pirates would actually stoop as low as to settle there. Not to mention the Spanish Empire with its clearly defined position towards Galapagos travel in general: which can be best defined as utterly fearful. Let’s just put it this way: Humanity as a whole had to evolve. That is what makes Galapagos travel worth the while today.

When the Islands were annexed in 1832, the newly-created Republic of Ecuador was in need of grabbing something from what the larger Bolivarian nations were leaving behind.  Pirates had left, so this could be considered a positive acquisition. Ecuador was already being reduced to the size of the U.S. state of Colorado: a little more land, why not… But what the humbled Republic of Ecuador didn’t know is that it was in for a surprise. Of course, it took more than a century to realize the magnitude of the surprise, but only three years after Ecuador claimed the islands, Charles Darwin disembarked on them. Then came the Theory of Evolution and decades of ardent discussions on God and Science. Ecuador remained pretty much oblivious to it all, as its authorities tried desperately to figure out what these fruitless islands could be good for. The ideas were either creative or inane, (depending on how you look at it): Villamil’s “Assylum of Peace”, Cobos’ Empire, the salt mines, the dyeing industry, two attempted penal colonies… (I’ll delve into these individually on future Galapagos travel blogs…). They all failed miserably.

The fact that leasing part of the Islands to the United States was probably the most positive of Ecuadorian endeavors before 1950, says a lot. But since the 1930s, international scientific interest in the islands incited Ecuador to follow a different path, a path whose distant light shined through in 1959, when the Galapagos National Park was founded…

… to be continued …