The Galapagos Islands form a Pacific Ocean archipelago located 972 km off the coast of Ecuador. It is made up of 13 large islands, one with an area larger than 10 km²; six medium islands with an area of from 1 km² a 10 km²; and another 214 small islets as well as rocky promontories of a few square meters distributed around the line of the terrestrial equator.
The islands were declared a World Heritage Site in 1978. The archipelago has a large flow of income from tourism, receiving 200,000 tourists a year. It has developed ecological tourism in order to preserve the species.
Galapagos is known for its numerous endemic species and for the studies by Charles Darwin, which led him to establish his theory of evolution by natural selection. They are called the Enchanted Islands, a name the archipelago earned in the 16th century for its great biodiversity of flora and fauna, inheriting the name for generations. The region was the habitat of Lonesome George, the last specimen of the giant male Pinta Island tortoise, which became extinct on 24 June 2012. The islands are also habitat of species such as sea turtles, iguanas, crocodiles, cormorants, albatrosses, sea lions and penguins.
The formation of the first island is estimated to have taken place five million years ago as a result of tectonic activity. The most recent islands, called Isabela and Fernandina, are still in the process of formation (the most recent volcanic eruption was registered in 2009. Like the continental mass of Ecuador, the archipelago is crossed by the equatorial line, mostly north of Isabela Island.
Galapagos is the second archipelago with the most volcanic activity on the planet, surpassed by Hawaii, entering in the category of hot spots. The most active volcanoes are Cerro Azul, Sierra Negra, Marchena and La Cumbre Volcano on Fernandina Island, which is the most active in the archipelago and one of the most active in the world.
Administratively, the Galapagos Islands constitute a province of Ecuador since 1973, made up of three cantons, which are the islands of San Cristóbal, Santa Cruz and Isabela. On 12 February 1832, under the presidency of Juan José Flores, the Galapagos Islands were annexed to Ecuador.