Page 9 - Palm City Spotlight - December '23

Palm City Spotlight, Page 9

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Very Few People Visit Here ... To: Luxury Travelers destination! Very few get the opportunity to visit this oasis
of an amazing cast of plants and animals. And because
From: The Galapagos Islands
And For Very Good Reasons! of its remote location, efforts are made to promote
sustainable tourism. This includes setting limits on the
By Jessica Flores. Jessica has number of visitors, implementing eco-friendly practices,
worked in the travel and tourism and ensuring that tourism activities have minimal impact
industry for well over a decade. on the environment.
She holds both Bachelors and The entire Galápagos archipelago is designated as
Master’s Degrees in Hospitality a UNESCO World Heritage site, which places it under
& Tourism Management. As international protection. This status brings global
owner of AWAY Travel in Boca attention to the islands and their conservation needs.
Raton, Jessica and staff bring As for what to pack in your luggage, it’s best to take
25 years of personal travel the essentials with you because you won’t find any malls
experience to an exclusive here. That includes sturdy closed-toe walking shoes
clientele looking for luxury with durable soles, diving booties, lightweight hiking
travel planning. Ready for your clothes, good sun hat, insect repellent, sunscreen and
own journey to begin? Visit: www.travelwithaway.com. Email Pack Your Bags: The Galápagos Islands, located an underwater camera. Also, leave the heels at home,
me: Jessica@travelwithaway.com or call: (877) 493-AWAY. roughly 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, is a special especially if you’ve booked a boat-based itinerary. Even
the most luxurious boats have narrow, steep stairways that
are nearly impossible to navigate safely (or gracefully)
in heels.
Island History: Back in the early 1800s, swashbuckling
CELEBRATING pirates and intrepid explorers started arriving in the
Galápagos Islands. The most famous early visitor was
Charles Darwin, a young naturalist who spent 19 days
studying the islands’ flora and fauna. In 1859, Darwin
published On the Origin of Species, which introduced his
theory of evolution – and the Galápagos Islands – to the
world.
Since then, word of these islands and their magnificent
beauty has steadily grown. In 1959, the Galápagos
became Ecuador’s first national park, and in 1978 it was
named a UNESCO World Heritage site. Today, more than
275,000 people visit the Galápagos every year to see those
incredible animals and landscapes for themselves.
As amazing as you anticipate the Galápagos Islands
will be, they routinely exceed visitors’ expectations. It’s
a place where lizards swim, birds walk, and humans – for
once – don’t take center stage.
Biodiversity brings more than 100,000 visitors each
year to these remote islands that were totally unknown to
the world until 1535. Without the influence of a human
presence, the islands’ flora and fauna and surrounding
marine life thrived for thousands of years by evolving
into unique species you won’t find anywhere else in the
world, such as the charismatic giant tortoises and blue-
footed boobies.
PROUDLY SERVING OUR COMMUNITY The Galápagos Islands:
Five Things To Know Before You Go
The Galapagos Islands are far out in the ocean.
While the Galápagos Islands belong to the tiny Andean
country of Ecuador, they are in fact very far from the
Cleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital offers rest of the country – 560 miles (901 kilometers), to be
exact. The islands are far out in the Pacific Ocean, and
it takes just two hours to fly there from Quito, Ecuador’s
preventive, primary and acute hospital capital. Since the Galapagos Islands belong to Ecuador,
the national language is Spanish.
care, as well as a full array of specialty Lots of islands to visit. There are 127 islands that
make up this tropical archipelago, but only about 20 are
frequently visited by tourists, and only four have major
services. Our physicians represent 71 populations. Several of the smaller islets are not inhabited
by humans at all, only by wildlife. The islands sit right
medical specialties and subspecialties, on the equator and are home to over 25,000 people.
About half of them live in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz
Island, which makes it by far the biggest settlement of
and provide collaborative, patient-centered the archipelago. Most people who visit the Galapagos
Islands only get to set foot on one or two of the islands,
care to the Treasure Coast community. and cruise around some of the others without actually
docking there.
Unique species you will see nowhere else in the
world. One thing the Galápagos Islands are famous for is
the variety of wildlife. This includes a number of species
endemic to the islands, such as the Galápagos fur seal,
ClevelandClinicFlorida.org | 877.463.2010 the Galápagos land iguana, the Galápagos sea lion, the
Galápagos land tortoise and the marine iguana (the only
lizard that can swim). The Galápagos Islands are also the
only place in the entire world where penguins live along
the equator.
In addition to the species that are unique to the
Galápagos Islands, there are dozens of other species,
none of which seem to care about the presence of visitors.
Sightings of blue-footed boobies, great frigate birds,
marine iguanas, giant tortoises, hammerhead sharks,
manta rays and flamingos are pretty much guaranteed.
Activities and adventures like no other. It will be
a long day of hiking, kayaking and snorkeling, every
single day, typically twice per day. And I’ll tell you this:
You won’t want to miss out on a single activity! That’s
how breathtaking these islands are when seen firsthand.

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