There is a possibility that the Incas organised an expedition here first, but most historians accept that the islands were stumbled upon by accident by the Spanish bishop of Panama. He dubbed the islands 'Las Encantadas', although this was not in praise of their charms, which he dismissed out of hand, describing the birdlife as 'so silly that they do not know to flee'. Rather, the name 'the Bewitched Ones' stuck because the confusing tides and currents around the island, and the frequent swirling mists, tricked navigators eyes so that the islands seemed to appear and disappear.

Ecuador claimed the Galapagos Islands in 1832, just three years before their most famous visitor, Charles Darwin, dropped anchor on the Beagle and stepped ashore and into history. For the next century, the islands were inhabited by a few settlers and were used as a penal colony. Its' only visitors during this time were buccaneers and whaling ships, which quickly discovered that giant tortoise meat was the perfect long haul food supply. Countless thousands were killed during this time and today only around 15,000 remain. The archipelago became a national park in 1959.

Today, the park is protected from haphazard tourism by strict limits on where visitors are allowed to go, and all visitors are obliged to be accompanied by a certified naturalist tour guide trained by the national park service. The individual islands have been given a variety of names over the years by British pirates, the Spanish and the Ecuadorian government, and today each island usually has at least two names still in use. Even the name Galapagos has been changed several times, taken from a Spanish word for tortoise - the giant creature that most astonished the first explorers.