Galápagos Islands – Day 5: Beneath Darwin’s Arch
GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS
Day 5: Beneath Darwin's Arch
October 26, 2025
PART I
Another early wake-up, another four-hour journey – and we had finally reached our main destination: Darwin Island. As soon as my alarm went off, I ran to the upper deck to get my first proper look at the legendary sight. Seeing the legendary Darwin’s Arch rising from the water had my eyes welling up. It felt like crossing one of the Wonders of the World off my bucket list.
Located in the far, far north-west of the Galápagos Archipelago, Darwin Island is one of the most remote and wildlife-rich places in the Pacific. It’s tiny and uninhabited, and while visitors aren’t allowed to set foot on it, its surrounding waters have become legendary among divers. Just off the island’s south-eastern coast once stood Darwin’s Arch, a spectacular natural rock formation whose upper span collapsed through erosion in 2021. What remains are two enormous columns rising dramatically from the ocean, now known as the Darwin Pillars. Beneath its surface lies the dive site, which is widely regarded as one of the greatest places to dive on Earth.
The island itself is named after Charles Darwin, although the famous English naturalist never actually set foot there. During his 1835 visit to the Galápagos, Darwin explored San Cristóbal, Floreana, Isabela and Santiago. His observations of the animals across those islands later became important evidence as he developed his theory of evolution by natural selection.
The Currents Behind the Magic
Early in the morning, still unaware of the fact that we had woken up, Jimmy gave us a short lecture about the currents of the archipelago and how they came to be.
The wider Galápagos Archipelago, he explained, is shaped by several major ocean systems. Warm water arrives from the north-east with the Panama Current, cooler and more nutrient-rich water approaches from the south-east through the Peru, or Humboldt, system, and the deep Cromwell Current flows eastwards beneath the surface before producing its strongest upwelling around the western islands.
Darwin and Wolf are primarily influenced by the warmer Panama Current rather than sitting at a literal meeting point of all three. Even so, the combination of moving water, underwater topography and the broader productivity of the Galápagos creates an incredibly rich marine environment, attracting enormous schools of fish alongside sharks, rays, turtles, dolphins and whales.
The currents around the former arch can also be powerful and unpredictable. In fact, Jimmy had warned us about one flow that could push divers towards the rocks surrounding the Pillars. This was certainly not a beginner-friendly dive, and operators generally reserve it for advanced divers with substantial experience in strong currents. Hence the endless briefing and all those delightful descriptions of the ways in which we might disappear.
PART II
A Shadow in the Blue
Brimming with excitement, I headed down to the diving platform, ready for what would surely be another extraordinary day at one of the best dive sites in the world. That said, I was also slightly apprehensive, fully aware of how challenging the conditions could be. And so, equally excited and anxious, I took the plunge with Juan and Team Whale Shark. Right into a school of hammerheads. If that wasn’t promising, I didn’t know what was.
We headed straight towards the rocky bottom and found a place along the wall where we could settle in and watch the marine life pass before our eyes. Surprisingly, there was hardly any current, something Jimmy later told us was exceptionally rare. As I perched against the rocks, it felt exactly like being inside an aquarium, except this aquarium was filled with hundreds of hammerheads. The whole scene was utterly surreal. Every direction I looked, another magnificent silhouette emerged from the blue. Picture a diving brochure with hammerhead silhouettes gliding beneath turquoise water, the sun shining through from above. That was precisely what we were seeing. God knows how many videos I took.
Then something shifted. The sharks and the thousands of damselfish, jacks and wrasses hanging around us suddenly scattered, every creature moving away at maximum speed as if fleeing from something. Juan began banging furiously on his tank. Then I saw it. A shadow in the distance. A very, very large shadow. I don’t think I’d ever swum so hard or fast in my life. I had no idea what it was, but I knew I had to see whatever could send actual sharks racing in the opposite direction.
A shadow was all I managed to see before it disappeared into the blue. We still had several dives ahead of us, though, so I wasn’t too dejected. During our safety stop, I tried to concentrate on everything we had seen rather than whatever we might have missed. That was when the shadow reappeared. Then it stopped being a shadow. It was a humpback whale. An actual humpback whale, right there in front of us. I had seen humpbacks in Antarctica, Costa Rica, Norway and a few other places in between, but those encounters had always been from the surface. This was completely different. I was diving with a humpback whale.
The encounter lasted only a few seconds before the magnificent creature faded back into the blue. Team Mola Mola had managed to get a much clearer view during the first sighting, and their footage inevitably left us feeling as though we had somehow missed out despite seeing the exact same whale. Even so, I was exhilarated. I had laid eyes on a humpback whale underwater, even if only for a few glorious seconds!
Bro, Hold My Beer
The second dive was practically a rehash of the first, minus the humpback whale. It was relatively uneventful, save for a jellyfish near the end.
But the third dive? Bro, hold my beer. The third dive was probably the best dive of my life. It began much like the previous two. Slow but steady. And, as we admired the shoals and schools of grunts, snappers and groupers, we heard frantic tank-banging somewhere in the distance. Jimmy’s group had spotted something. Juan instructed us to follow him, and after what felt like an underwater marathon, we had all but given up.
With a bitter taste in our mouths, we began our safety stop, fully expecting to return to the surface and hear about yet another Team Mola Mola victory while we stood around like losers who had drawn the short straw. That was when, out of the blue, an enormous whale shark appeared. A whale shark!
I had seen one before. I had even swum alongside one shortly after arriving in Utila, Honduras, in 2022, and that encounter had become one of the greatest days of my life. But snorkelling with a whale shark and diving with one were two completely different experiences.
I found myself facing the gentle giant head-on, its enormous open mouth directly in front of me. Jimmy’s briefing flashed through my mind: don’t obstruct its path, avoid startling it with bubbles and stay well clear of that extraordinarily powerful tail. I moved slightly higher and off to one side, leaving plenty of space between us. Somehow, while attempting to process what was happening, I also managed to capture an incredible shot, with Mitch taking a similar video from below.
I had seen one before. I had even swum alongside one shortly after arriving in Utila, Honduras, in 2022, and that encounter had become one of the greatest days of my life. But snorkelling with a whale shark and diving with one were two completely different experiences.
I found myself facing the gentle giant head-on, its enormous open mouth directly in front of me. Jimmy’s briefing flashed through my mind: don’t obstruct its path, avoid startling it with bubbles and stay well clear of that extraordinarily powerful tail. I moved slightly higher and off to one side, leaving plenty of space between us. Somehow, while attempting to process what was happening, I also managed to capture an incredible shot.
A Hammerhead Vortex
After the dive, we had lunch and enjoyed a short nap before returning to the water for the fourth and final time. It could have been the dullest dive imaginable and I wouldn’t have cared. My entire trip had already been made by the humpback whale and whale shark.
Yet somehow, the fourth dive didn’t disappoint either. Let me cut to the chase: we didn’t see any more enormous animals. We did, however, watch a huge tuna devour a fish, witness a mobula ray being pursued by a reef shark and encounter a school of black durgons, fish that had always fascinated me. But the grand finale, as always, arrived during the safety stop.
Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of hammerheads surrounded us from every conceivable direction. By then we understood that they were generally shy and far more interested in one another than in us, although they were still large, powerful wild animals deserving of plenty of respect and a healthy dose of fear. It felt like being trapped inside a vortex of hammerheads. A Sharknado, if you will.
To top it all off, a couple of dolphins appeared near the end. We had heard their clicking and squealing throughout the dive, and finally getting to see them completed an already ridiculous day underwater.
What awaited us above the surface was no less impressive. With the sun approaching the horizon, thousands of birds were returning to Darwin Island to roost, turning the sky into a chaotic blur of wings. I still don’t understand how none of us got pooped on.
At the end of that day, I found myself thinking about what a beautiful life I was living and how grateful, privileged and lucky I was to be living such a dream. It wasn’t only about the humpback whale, the whale shark or the vortex of hammerheads. It was the realisation that I had somehow built a life in which I could travel to places like this, throw myself into the ocean and still be moved to tears by what I found there.
Beneath the Darwin Pillars, I had felt entirely and overwhelmingly alive. For one day, the world had given me more joy than I knew how to contain. Jaded though I might have been about travelling, diving was still it for me. I’d never, ever get tired of diving – of that, I was 100% sure.