The Galápagos archipelago is a part of Ecuador. It is a group of islands situated on both sides of the equator. They were discovered in the 16th by the Spanish missioner that lost his way from Panama to Peru. At that time, the islands were uninhabited. But later, after a priest told the story of an extraordinary place where unbelievable creatures lived, people started to come. Pirates were hiding their treasures here, while scientists were making discoveries.

Traces of ancient people were found here: some say they were the Incas, others consider them to be the sailors that were brought here by storm. Charles Darwin also visited this place. He discovered that some of the local species cannot be found anywhere else on our planet. For example, the Galápagos land iguana is the only lizard that can feed in water. Large species being two feet long look like Godzilla and were characterised by the British explorer as the "Horrible creatures from hell". However, he was wrong: iguanas are not dangerous to humans. They eat only seaweeds and bathe in the sunlight when they have nothing else to do.

A strange bird with bright blue legs can be found here. It is the blue-footed booby that is famous in the American tropics. The colour of their legs was adapted to the mating habits of males. Birds with dull colours don't have any chance of matting.

In total, the island is inhabited by numerous species of birds (45 of them are endemics), 42 reptiles, 15 mammals and 79 species of fish. But the most famous inhabitant of the Galápagos gives the name to the whole archipelago: "Isolas de Galápagos" that means "The Island of Tortoises". The Galápagos tortoise, also called the Elephant tortoise, is the largest living species of tortoises. Nowadays this species is a rare one, but you can see these tortoises in our new 360° AirPano video.

Our camera was placed on the ground, so the viewers can experience the Galápagos islands as if they were in this place on their own, and not from a bird-eye view like we usually do. We used Insta360 Pro to make this video. We're thankful to Insta360 for providing the camera.

Video by Alexey Tishchenko, Oleg Gaponyuk. Photos by Oleg Gaponyuk, Max Guzovsky. Video stitching by Nickolay Denisov

7 November 2018