We sail south, and the islands are still green, crowded with flowers: Lantana, Sesuvium, Tribulus, Cordia, Trianthema, and Ipomoea flowers. Over there we are transported to the rainy season
We navigate to the northern islands to find aridness, leafless, rockiness. Up there it is the dry season. Within the same week we can appreciate both fairly distinct seasons, with the great advantage that it implies: land creatures are still active where is humid and green, sea birds are getting dynamic where it is already cool and dry.
We are right now in the "transition season," at the end of the rainy season and at the beginning of the dry season. We visit Tower or James islands, and we find no leaves on the palo santo "holy trees"; the long dry period has begun. But in Floreana, Santa Cruz, Espanola this deciduous tree is not dormant yet; the lowland vegetation is at its peak. The holy tree, Bursera graveolens, (the one on the picture) is probably the representative plant of the most extensive of the Galapagos vegetation zones: the arid zone.
Visitors today do travel in time. They can compare how different the landscape is, depending on the marine currents bathing the islands. With Panama flow, from January through May, the temperature of the water and air rises up, and occasionally it rains. The weather from June to December is created by the Humboldt Current, which brings cold water north from the Antarctic along the West Coast of South America and then westward through the archipelago. This results in cooler air temperature. And from May to June we have it all together!
Tui de Roy called the islands "Lost in Time"; at the end of May we are able to call them "with all the times".
