Qualla: Genovesa Island

Genovesa Island: Introduction

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Wilton, CC BY 2.0. Before it became Genovesa, this island was called Quita Sueño - Nightmare Island - by the Spanish sailors who kept nearly running into it. You can still see their point. The horseshoe-shaped rim of a collapsed volcanic caldera rises out of the equatorial Pacific with almost no warning, cliffs on three sides, a narrow entrance on the fourth. Slip through that entrance and you enter Great Darwin Bay: an inundated crater where your boat floats inside the volcano itself, surrounded by bird colonies so dense that the sky above you is constantly in motion.

Read more: Genovesa Island on Qualla

Image: Peter Wilton | CC BY 2.0

Genovesa Island: A Crater You Can Sail Into

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Harvey Barrison from Massapequa, NY, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. Genovesa is a shield volcano that covers roughly 14 square kilometers above the waterline, with its highest point at 64 meters. Its caldera wall has partially collapsed to seaward, allowing the ocean to flood the crater and form Great Darwin Bay. Inside that bay sits Lake Arcturu...

Read more: Genovesa Island on Qualla

Image: Harvey Barrison from Massapequa, NY, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Genovesa Island: The Name Collectors

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Haplochromis, CC BY-SA 3.0. Few places change names as often as this one. The Spanish first called it Quita Sueño for the hazard it posed. The English pirate William Ambrosia Cowley charted it in 1684 as Eure's Island, a name whose origin is still debated - possibly after William Ewres of Jamaica, possibly ...

Read more: Genovesa Island on Qualla

Image: Haplochromis | CC BY-SA 3.0

Genovesa Island: The Birds That Run the Place

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Adam Kess, CC BY-SA 3.0. Genovesa is one of the best birdwatching sites in the Galápagos, and that is saying something. Great frigatebirds nest in numbers that would be hard to believe if you weren't standing in the middle of them - males with their red throat pouches fully inflated, trying to attract ma...

Read more: Genovesa Island on Qualla

Image: David Adam Kess | CC BY-SA 3.0

Genovesa Island: Prince Philip's Steps

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pete from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. One of the two main visitor trails climbs a steep natural staircase up a 25-meter cliff, known as Prince Philip's Steps after the British royal who visited Genovesa. At the top, the path continues inland through a thin palo santo forest and across a rocky plain, passing colony af...

Read more: Genovesa Island on Qualla

Image: Pete from USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Genovesa Island: Diving the Caldera

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leon Brocard from London, UK, CC BY 2.0. Great Darwin Bay is one of the more distinctive dive sites in the Galápagos simply because of its geography. Divers can descend along the inner wall of the caldera, exposed to calm water and the cliff's hanging communities of invertebrates. The outer wall of the volcano offers le...

Read more: Genovesa Island on Qualla

Image: Leon Brocard from London, UK | CC BY 2.0