![]() Darwin’s five-week visit to these remarkable islands catalyzed the scientific revolution that now bears his name.ĭarwin’s revolutionary theory was that new species arise naturally, by a process of evolution, rather than having been created-forever immutable-by God. The Beagle’s captain, Robert FitzRoy, described the barren volcanic landscape as “a shore fit for Pandemonium.” At 26, Darwin had come to the archipelago, which straddles the Equator some 600 miles west of Ecuador, as part of the Beagle’s five-year mission to survey the coast of South America and to conduct a series of longitudinal measurements around the globe. This is the deceptively treacherous world of sun-baked lava, spiny cactus and tangled brushwood into which Charles Darwin stepped in September 1835, when he reached the Galápagos Islands with fellow crew members of the HMS Beagle. A sign in the Tortoise Reserve says bluntly: “Stop. A former Israeli tank commander, he had been in top physical condition, yet had managed to go only six miles before succumbing to the searing heat and lack of fresh water. In the end, fishermen discovered the young man’s body. In fact, some of the searchers themselves became lost and had to be rescued. Amassive, two-month search failed to find him. One was a young Israeli tourist who lost his way in Santa Cruz’s Tortoise Reserve in 1991. Most were subsequently found alive after having become hopelessly lost in dense underbrush and rugged volcanic terrain. On Santa Cruz Island, where the Charles Darwin Research Station is located, 17 people have disappeared since 1990. The minute a person steps off any of the tourist trails created by the Galápagos National Park Service and heads into the untamed interior of one of these islands, there is the risk of death under the intense, equatorial sun. ![]() From the nine times I have made the 5,000-mile journey to the Galápagos Islands, to follow in Charles Darwin’s footsteps, the most enduring impression I have gained is of life’s fragility.
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