Meet the natives: The Wildlife of the Galapagos in Photos

So, landscapes are all well and good, but really, what you want to see from the Galapagos are cute baby sea lion photos, am I right?

Finding cute baby sea lions was definitely *not* a problem in the Galapagos, particularly on San Cristobal island, where we practically fell over them all the time, draped over pretty much everything in sight.

It’s not all about the sea lions, though. The Galapagos is home to a pretty fantastic collection of wildlife, some of which we captured in pictures during our tour with GalaKiwi, and we’re going to share them with you today. Although, there will be the odd baby sea lion photo or three thrown in just for good measure…

Just… don’t call them seals. Mmkay?

Sea turtles! Not the same as tortoises. Unless you’re German, in which case your transgression is forgivable, because the word for both is the same in German.

When two hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not, hmm? This one’s a tortoise. They live on the land. That’s the difference.

I have no idea at all what this thing is. It was crawling around on the beach, distracting us from cute sea lions. If you know what it is, shout in the comments please!

It’s a Sally Lightfoot crab! Great name, eh? It’s also called a red rock crab. For reasons that are possibly apparent. The males get red, as far as I recall.

This is a marine Iguana. As you can see, he is unimpressed by our camera toting efforts. These guys tried evolution, but stopped a while ago, happy with where they got.

A quick break from our normal programming to deliver a couple of smiling sea lions. It’s not a tough life, to be honest. A lot of sleeping, a bit of messing around in the water, and likely some food. You can see what they’re smiling about.

Yes! The Galapagos also has flamingos. And if you keep looking under there, you’ll find them too. Honestly, I could swear I left them round here somewhere.

I have a feeling that this is one of those finches that started the whole thing with Darwin off. Naturally I have no idea which finch it is – they all look different. This is, apparently, the point.

Blue footed boobies. Looking all serious. Probably because of the name. Dealing with the jokes must get tiresome. Still, at least they have blue feet to make it all worth it. Right guys? Right? Hmm. Maybe this will cheer them up.

Awww. Doesn’t that just make everything better!

These are male frigate birds doing their mating display, which involves puffing themselves up like balloons, and then getting terribly excited when a female flies past, often to the point of falling over that giant balloon.

In the time we watched, none of the female frigate birds seemed particularly impressed by these two. Still, it must work.

There was an excellent collection of lizards in the Galapagos too, of all colours and sizes. Again, I’m not really sure what this chap was called.

In case you were wondering, our GalaKiwi guide was fantastic in terms of knowing what everything was. My brain just failed to remember. After attempting to explain the difference between a Magnificent and a Great Frigate bird to our group for around the umpteenth time, I think he had a crisis. Poor chap. Anyway. This is a lizard.

And this is a red-footed booby! Our mission to find them at Punta Pitt on San Cristobal was a success! Hurrah!

This is a baby sea lion sleeping on a rock. It doesn’t look totally comfortable if you ask me.

And another giant tortoise! These guys differ in species between the islands, and actually look remarkably different to one another. It’s fascinating stuff.

The bird life is kind of incredible, and so is how close you can get to it. Of course, I have no idea what kind of bird this is, but does that matter? Probably.

This one I do know. It’s a yellow warbler. Hope is not yet lost for my ornithological prowess.

This is a male frigate bird not on display. Amazing how that balloon tucks away!

And here’s a male frigate bird floating on by. Did I mention how close you end up being to everything? It’s pretty amazing. I shot this at the wide end of my super wide angle lens, and still managed to miss the wing tip!

And we’re coming to the end. Here are a couple more marine Iguanas looking spectacularly impressed by us.

And we’ll finish this particular photo essay with this cute pair of baby sea lions. They had quite a lot of important business to be doing, but stopped for long enough for us to take some photos of them.

Finally, we also encountered a whole host of more aquatic creatures whilst in the Galapagos, which I summarised into this ten second video for you guys with short attention spans. Enjoy!

And that’s it for some of our favourite shots of the animals we encountered in the Galapagos on our tour with Galapagos experts GalaKiwi.

To be honest, we have enough photos of cute animals to do another post just like this – if you guys want that, just let us know! Otherwise, we’ll be bringing all our thoughts on the GalaKiwi tour, the activities we got up to, and some tips for planning your perfect Galapagos trip to the blog very soon! Subscribe below so you don’t miss out.