The fascination of the Galapagos Islands is that each island is
so different. Each has its own wildlife, and will change
depending on the time of the year and climatic conditions. For
more details of variations during the year, see Galapagos
calendar. One has to bear this in mind when visiting each
island. Birds that nested on one island the year before, might
have moved to another island finding better conditions there. Or
the waved albatross who - just when you came to see them - may
have already left their nesting site on Hood Island a few weeks
earlier than expected! But in return, one experiences the living
laboratory of evolution at work. Most of the islands have only
official visitor sites, established by the Galapagos National
Park Service in conjunction with the Charles Darwin Research
Station. These are areas where, accompanied by a licensed guide,
tourists may enter. Visitor sites are typically delimited by a
series of trail markers. From time to time some visitor sites
get closed, new ones opened.