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Discover the Galapagos Islands
Discover craggy cliffs, hidden lava tunnels, beautiful sand beaches, vibrant turquoise waterways, and birds wherever you look. Your journey across the Galapagos will seem like an incredible discovery at every turn. No one will have visited that beach before, no one will have experienced the freshwater currents like you, no one will have appreciated the Galapagos albatross in the same way that you do, and no one will have experienced the fleeting moment of peaceful communication with a Galapagos Sea turtle that occurred when it directly met your gaze.
Fray Tomas de Berlanga may have found the Galapagos many years ago, but they eagerly await your discovery. And trust me when I say that not only will you learn about the Galapagos Islands, but you will learn about yourself as well. Every time you look at the world, it will appear to you as if it were your first. That’s what discovery means.
The Spirit of Exploration
How might one find a star in a sea of stars in the sky and be the first to do so? How could one find a new location on Earth before anybody else does? A mountain that no one has ever scaled. No eyes have ever seen a cliff, bay, volcano, desert, forest, or river. Something the history books haven’t touched on. To be the first person to walk on a beach that another human has never trodden? Or the first to feel the cool water of a never-before-trodden ocean with your fingertips? To identify a location and be aware that you have marked it on the map forever? The world is changed forever by a discovery.
A Fortuitous Encounter
That must have been the case when Fray Tomas de Berlanga’s ship was unintentionally stuck in an enigmatic archipelago in the middle of nowhere in 1535. His ship was forced to stop owing to heavy winds and currents that had blown it off course when he was traveling to mediate a disagreement between conquistadors Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro.
By pure accident, this enchanted but unfriendly location was discovered by Fray Tomas de Berlanga, the Bishop of Panama at the time, who named it “The Enchanted”—a term that would always accurately describe this place’s astounding intricacy. The Galapagos Islands entered the record after a century of shaping, dividing, and drawing the world. The Galapagos Islands would play a major part in a later and more significant discovery, but that would have to wait until the arrival of scientist and explorer Charles Darwin, even if its own (geological) history had been ongoing for millions of years.
The Adventurer Within
It must have been difficult for early explorers and discoverers to describe the pleasure, excitement, fear of the unknown, and surprise when preconceptions are challenged and beliefs are shattered. However, while it may appear that every location on Earth has been explored, this is only sometimes the case. Contemporary explorers are searching for something novel, something never seen before, or a fresh perspective on something seen numerous times. The individual observing is the object being seen. Every day, we all transform into new versions of ourselves, don’t we?
Every day, our unique selves view the world through a distinct lens. Undoubtedly, I’ll be alone when I go somewhere on a given day, leaving my mark on a dirt road that the wind will blow away by morning. Nobody else will have witnessed it from my perspective, emotions, and reality. Nobody is going to understand how much that place meant to me. And after all the years of change, experiences, and life I may have had, that identical site will have taken on new significance. It will be an entirely novel finding.
Though it may be difficult to understand, we are all born with creative, curious spirits that yearn to both explore and be discovered. Discovering something novel in a location or an individual is merely a mirror of discovering something novel within ourselves. We find ourselves by exploring the world and stepping outside of our comfort zones.
