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Browse more guides: Ecuador travel | South America destinations Best Galápagos Islands and Wildlife Cruise Destinations Galápagos Islands and wildlife cruise tourism delivers extraordinary natural experiences across one of the world's most-celebrated wildlife archipelagos. The Galápagos Islands (Ecuadorian territory ~1,000km west of mainland) preserves UNESCO World Heritage with extraordinary endemic wildlife including giant tortoises, marine iguanas, blue-footed boobies, multiple endemic species inspiring Charles Darwin's evolution theory development. Travel built around Galápagos combines extensive multi-day cruises plus broader Ecuadorian travel through extraordinary archipelagic destinations. The Galápagos preserves world's most extraordinary endemic wildlife heritage with extensive species found nowhere else globally. Multi-day cruise expeditions (typically 5-15 days) represent standard exploration approach given several-island access requirements. Combined with b...

Browse more guides: Ecuador travel | Americas destinations Best Ecuadorian Galápagos Islands (UNESCO 1978), Quito Old Town (UNESCO 1978), Cotopaxi Volcano, Cuenca (UNESCO 1999), Yasuní Amazon, Sangay (UNESCO 1983) and Qhapaq Ñan (UNESCO 2014) Deep Andean Heritage Tour Destinations TL;DR I built this Ecuador itinerary across two long trips and one shorter side run, and the consistent surprise was how much the country compresses into a footprint smaller than the U.S. state of Nevada. Mainland Ecuador is roughly 256,370 square kilometers, and inside that you get the Pacific coast, the high Andes spine with active volcanoes above 5,000 meters, the western Amazon headwaters, and the Galápagos archipelago sitting 1,000 kilometers off the mainland in the Pacific. The country was the first place I ever visited that holds five separate UNESCO World Heritage inscriptions, and two of them (Galápagos Islands and the City of Quito) were on the very first World Heritage list published in 1978. ...