El Yunque and Dino Angel

Greetings All,

We are back in Florida and returning home tomorrow.  We did get to hike in El Yunque National Forest, a cool, mountainous, sub-tropical rainforest on the northeastern end of Puerto Rico.  The Luquillo Mountains are the first land mass encountered by the moisture-laden trade winds formed off the coast of Africa. Our first hike took us to the 3543-foot summit of El Yunque Peak.  We hiked up on a good trail through Mountain Sierra Palm forest with ferns and bromeliads.  The view from the top was somewhat obscured by clouds but we did get glimpses of the surrounding mountains and coastline below.  

On the way back down we took a spur trail to the observation tower on 3088-foot Mt. Britton.  

This tower and others in the National Forest were constructed between 1933 and 1942 by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the CCC as part of the New Deal Initiative, a program to help end the Great Depression. 

The next day we hiked along the Big Tree Trail to La Mina Falls.  This is a popular destination for tourists and locals alike.  Many people were clambering over boulders to get to the pool at the base of the Falls.

We could hear birds in the forest but they were difficult to see.  We did not see the rare Puerto Rico Parrot (there are only 85 left in the wild) but did get a good look at a Scaly-naped Pigeon which is found throughout the Caribbean.

Other than bats there are no native mammals in Puerto Rico.  We did get a glimpse of an introduced Indian Mongoose crossing the road.  These animals have become pests and are the largest carrier of rabies.  There were land snails along the trail and one posed nicely on a brightly flowered Heliconia.

After our hike we headed to the Marina Puerto del Rey for the start of our second Bio-bay tour. This Bio-bay is located on the island of Vieques so we had to take a 45-minute catamaran ride to get there.  We were joined by 22 others including a group of 4 young women dressed in fancy dresses, jewelry and sandals for the tour.  Did they get a different email than us?  They looked like they were going on a fancy dinner/booze cruise rather than going on a Bio-bay tour.  We were served rum punch, piña coladas and the popular rum and diet coke on the boat ride over so it was sort of a booze cruise.  Once on the island we were served dinner before going on the actual tour at 8:30.  We boarded a pontoon boat powered by electric motors and you could immediately see the bio-luminance caused by the wake of the boat.

Our tour guide asked if anyone wanted to stick a foot into the water and a young woman eagerly answered "yes!". She just happened to be wearing a bathing suit so she was able to go completely into the water.  Swimming in the Bio-bays has been banned since 2007 but this tour gets around it by allowing 2-3 "swimmers" per tour as long as you have two points of contact on the ladder.  I wanted to go swimming with the dinoflagellates too but I didn't have a bathing suit.  Oh, what the heck, I didn't know these people and would never see them again.  I volunteered next and stripped down to my underwear to swim with the Dinos!   It's not as crude as it sounds.  I had a jog bra on and it was too dark to see anything.  I climbed down the ladder and held on with one hand and a foot.  I swirled the free arm and leg through the water letting the Dinos do their magic.  It's an entirely different experience when you're actually in the water with them.  The tour guide told me to hook both my feet through the ladder and create a "Dino angel" with both my arms!

After I got back in the boat our tour guide, Ricky, told us that although swimming in the Bio-bays was banned in 2007, it wasn't enforced until 2011 after a woman was attacked by a shark!  Now, he tells me though it wouldn't have kept me from going into the water.

All too soon it was time to return to shore.  We had another surprise in store for us.  A man flagged our bus down and asked if we wanted to see a nesting sea turtle.  "Heck yes" was the overwhelming response.  We followed the man to a nest where a rare Hawksbill turtle was just finishing up covering her eggs.  

She had just laid 160 of them and will nest up to 5 times this season.  Three species of sea turtles, Leatherback, Green and Hawksbill nest on Vieques.   The Hawksbill Turtle is critically endangered due to human fishing practices and the collection of their shells for jewelry and other decorative items.

What a magical evening!  We are looking forward to returning to Vermont where spring wildflowers and biking await.  We'll see many of you soon.
Peggy and Marc

Fascinating Forts and Dino Magic

Greetings All,
We have spent the last few days exploring Puerto Rico.  Yesterday we visited Old San Juan.  There is a lot of history here including two forts that were built in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries.  The first one we visited was Fort San Cristobal.  It was built by the Spanish from 1765 to 1783 to protect the city of San Juan from land-based attacks.  We entered the fort through a tunnel and stopped at the dungeon where prisoners drew ships on the wall while waiting to be released.

 

The impressive stone walls are as high as 150 feet and garitas or sentry boxes are built onto the outer walls.  On the eastern corner of the fort is the Garita del Diablo.

Legend has it that sentries would disappear from here presumably taken by the devil.  The living quarters were set up to show where the soldiers slept.  Wooden bunks lay side by side with woolen blankets and the soldiers' hats and other belongings set at the foot of each bed.  Uniforms hung from pegs on the wall behind the bunks.

From Fort San Cristobal we walked to Castillo San Filipe de Morro (El Morro).

This imposing citadel stands guard over San Juan Harbor.  The Spanish started construction in 1539 and many enlargements and modifications have been made over the years.   The lighthouse was rebuilt by the US in 1908 after being damaged during the Spanish-American war in 1898.  The war ended with the signing of Treaty of Paris. Spain ceded ownership of the islands of Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam and the Philippines to the United States.  The lighthouse has recently been refurbished.

 
A unique triangular staircase was used by the soldiers to get from level to level.

We just happened to be visiting during the reenactment of the Battle of 1797.  The  British Navy, under orders given by Sir Ralph Abercrombie, attacked the Port of San Juan back in 1797. To commemorate that event, a reenactment is held each year in Old San Juan, usually on the last weekend of April.  Men and women were dressed in the uniforms and clothing of the period.  They marched in formation to the beat of drums and stopped in front of us.  

The reenactors demonstrated how they loaded and fired their muskets and canons.  I couldn't believe how loud they were.  I had to plug my ears.

 

 

The event really brought the fort to life and we learned a bit of history to boot.

 

Last night we visited one of Puerto Rico's bio-luminescent bays, Laguna Grande.  We opted to take an electric boat that holds up to 6 passengers rather than a kayak.  There are now 9 companies offering kayak tours in the bay.  They can take up to 30 kayaks each so it has created a major kayak jam.  You have to negotiate a narrow mangrove channel in the dark to get into the bay.  As we were going in, hundreds of kayaks were coming out.  It was a bit hectic with inexperienced kayakers hitting each other, running into the mangroves and even hitting us.  Once into the bay all the kayakers were gone and peace and quiet resumed.  We were given plastic wands to stick into the water.  As we swirled them around the boat, the water glowed!  Millions of single-celled organisms called dinoflagellates were emitting light in response to the friction we were creating.  I scooped up some water with my hand and it sparkled like glitter, Dino Magic!

 

It's difficult to photograph this phenomenon but Marc gave it his best shot.

 

Enough for now.  We're finishing up with some hiking in El Yunque National Forest and a visit to another bio-bay.
We hope all is well back home.
Peggy and Marc

Champagne Beach and Boiling Lake

Greetings All,
Our trip to Dominica is coming to an end.  Heavy rain continued to plague us during most of our stay but we managed to get a few more activities in.  On Tuesday we visited Champagne Beach.

The draw here is the unique opportunity to swim through bubbles caused by gas escaping from underwater vents. We pretty much had the beach to ourselves and with a snorkel, fins and my trusty life jacket set off to explore the bay.  There were many colorful fish, yellow tube sponges, spiky sea urchins, fan corrals and an eel.  I wish we had an underwater camera to capture some of the beautiful creatures that live here.  Marc managed to photograph some of the bubbles with my point and shoot.

After snorkeling, we went whale watching out of Roseau.  We grabbed front row seats and pulled out our cameras and binoculars.  We were ready but where were the whales?  We searched for four hours cruising along the shore of Dominica, first south than north, but we didn't spot a whale or even a dolphin.  Marc had to settle for photographing flying fish.

We returned to the dock an hour late, just as the lights of Roseau flickered on.

A couple of days ago we took a short hike on the Glasse Trail.  The trail used to be a road that was used by fisherman to get their boats into the Atlantic.  After a few too many hurricanes, the village decided to abandon fishing.  The trail led down through rainforest to the coast.  The Atlantic Ocean crashed against the rugged cliffs.  There were a few pools carved out of volcanic rock.  

A small flock of White-tailed Tropicbirds soared around the cliffs where they were nesting.  Dr. Birdy tried to show us these birds when we were on our birding tour but they weren't around.

Since the chance of hiking to Victoria Falls was slim (there's still too much water in the river) we decided to try our luck at whale watching again.  With a 80% change of seeing whales we couldn't be unlucky two days in a row.  We grabbed our front row seats again and had high hopes but after several attempts to pick up the whale's clicks on the hydro phone we knew our chances were diminishing.  I had given up hope of seeing anything when a woman pointed out tiny brown fins in the water.  I caught a glimpse and Marc missed them entirely.  They dove down and we did not see them again.  According to the crew they were Pygmy Killer Whales.  Although not the sperm whales we were hoping to see, they were a new species for me.  We headed back to Roseau which was in the clear but the mountains remained cloaked in clouds

Yesterday was our last full day on Dominica.  We saved the best for last, a 6-hour hike to the Valley of Desolation and the Boiling Lake.  We set out at 7:30 and drove for a hour and a half.  It had rained during the night but appeared to be clearing up.  We had high hopes as we set out with our guide, a French couple and another couple from the US.  We climbed log stairs through rainforest then down again to cross a river.  We could hop across on rocks.  As we climbed higher, it started to rain in earnest.  We gave up trying to keep our boots dry and splashed on through water that now flowed down the trail.  We caught a glimpse of the steam rising from the Boiling Lake  below us.  The lake is a flooded volcanic fumarole heated by gas and molten magma beneath the Earth's crust.  Look closely between the rain drops.  The Valley of Desolation is the barren area on the right and you can just make out the steam from the Boiling Lake on the left.  

We started our decent into the Valley of Desolation and were met by another French couple and their guide that had passed us earlier.  Why were they returning?  With all this rain their guide felt it too dangerous to continue.  Carlos, our guide agreed that the threat of a landslide had become too great to risk.  I looked forlornly at The Valley of Desolation and knew it was the right call.

We headed back down and reached the river crossing.  The water had risen and the others in front of us were crossing on a tree that had fallen over the river!  I followed them, sitting on the tree and skooching across on my butt.  The vines snagged my shorts and scratched my legs but we made it across.

Trenches cut along the trail keep a lot of water off the trail but it was still slippery and you had to watch every step.

We finally returned to the truck and wrapped ourselves in yellow beach towels for the long drive back to the lodge in the open back of the truck.  Despite all the rain we had a good trip.  Dominica is a fascinating place to visit.  We'll return one day to give whale watching another try, to get to the Boiling Lake and to visit the tiny tree frogs that sang us to sleep every night. 

We're on our way to Puerto Rico now.  We hope it isn't as wet!
We hope all is well back home,
Peggy and Marc

Dominica Deluge

Greetings All,
We are on the tiny island of Dominica in the eastern Caribbean.  We so much enjoyed whale watching in New Zealand that when we arrived home I did an Internet search on other places in the world you can see Sperm Whales.  Dominica popped up.  It's surprising how many similarities Dominica has to New Zealand.  Both have a deep water canyon off shore which attracts whales and dolphins, both have boiling lakes (New Zealand has the largest and Dominica has the second largest in the world) and both countries have tree ferns.

So here we are in Dominica for a week. We arrived Thurs. night and up until today it has been raining cats and dogs.   Not the brief showers you commonly get in the tropics but torrential downpours that wash out roads and hiking trails and swell rivers to the point of flooding.... and this is the dry season!  We have managed to do some short tours around the lodge.  Friday we went into the tiny town of Delices to visit a local home and family business.  Joseph along with his wife and six children grow and process a plant that is locally known as Torloma.  

Joseph's wife holding a Torloma Plant

 

The tubers are harvested, washed and ground into a pulp.  The pulp is suspended in water and the starch settles to the bottom of a large blue barrel.   It is dried then ground into a flour to make cereal or thickener for gravy.

Joseph's daughter next to the finished product

It's amazing how people living in the tropics all around the world use a similar process for extracting starch from plants such as cassava, manioc, false banana and palm.  The end result doesn't have much nutritional value but has lots of calories and fills you up.

Saturday we visited the capital city of Roseau to take in the market and to visit Trafalgar Falls.  With all the recent rain, these were the only falls that we could safely walk to.  Water thundered over the falls dropping 200 feet onto the rocks below.

Trafalgar Falls

Yesterday we were able to go birding in Morne Diablotin National Park with Bertrand Jno Baptiste aka Dr. Birdy.  He is Dominica's foremost ornithologist and has written a guide on the birds of Dominica. We were in search of Dominica's  two endemic parrots.  After much searching we spotted a Sisserou or Imperial Parrot from a viewpoint.  There are only 300 of these birds left in the wild.  She was across the valley, about 400 meters away, feeding on the fruits of a tree.  She was difficult to photograph as she bobbed up and down on the branch, a real test for Marc's new camera and zoom lens.

Sisserou or Imperial Parrot

The second endemic parrot, a Jaco or Red-necked Parrot, was much closer.  They are more common than the Sisserou with about 3500 Red-necked Parrots in the wild.  A small flock were feeding on spiky fruit in a tree next to the road.

 Spiky fruit that the Red-necked Parrots were Feeding On

Jaco or Red-necked Parrot

We saw a host of other birds (humming birds, thrushes, warblers, hawks and doves) and two Agouti, a large rodent introduced from Central America.

Agouti

Today we were actually able to do a hike from the lodge without getting wet.  We got our first view of the surrounding rugged mountains.

We encountered some of the local critters along our route.  The first was a freshwater crab with just one claw.  The second is a little snake that we met on the path to our cabin.

We're hoping that the weather and water clarity will continue to improve and that we'll be able to go snorkeling at Champagne Beach tomorrow.  There is an underwater volcanic vent here and you can swim through the bubbles without getting boiled I hope.  There are also seahorses, octopus and turtles.  In the afternoon we hope to go whale watching.  If all else fails we can hang out in my lounge drinking local rum and beer!

We hope all is well back home.
Peggy and Marc

A Whale's Tale & Dolphin Joy

Greetings All,

It's hard to believe our 2-month journey is coming to an end.  We had a grand finale in Kaikoura over the past few days.  We did our first Whale Watch ever.   There is a deep 4000-foot canyon off the coast where cold water from Antarctica and warm water from the Pacific mix causing an upwelling.  This brings food up from the depths and attracts the whales.  We were looking for Sperm Whales, the largest of the toothed whales and the world's largest predator.  Mature males can weigh up to 63 tons and grow as long as 67 feet!  They can live up to 60-70 years.  So, where did the name Sperm Whale come from?  The early whalers found a semi-liquid, waxy substance coming out

of the head of male sperm whales.  They made the assumption that it was sperm and that the whale's reproductive organs must be in it's massive head.  However when they found the same substance in a female they knew they had been mistaken.  The name had already caught on so Sperm Whale it is. The substance is actually spermaceti and it is believed to aid in echolocation and buoyancy.  The captain used a hydrophone to pick up clicks from the whales then would move to the general location.  At last, a sperm whale on the surface! 

You can see very little of the whale except for the dorsal fin and the blowhole through which carbon dioxide is expelled in a spray of water. If you could see the whole whale he would look like this (not our picture):

The gray skin of the whale was wrinkled like an elephant's hide.  They don't stay on the surface for more than ten minutes.  Once their oxygen is replenished they will dive again displaying their massive tails.

Sperm whales can dive to 9700 feet making it the deepest diving mammal and stay submerged for 90 minutes!  Their favorite prey is colossal and giant squid.  It's clicking vocalization, a form of echolocation and communication, can be as loud as 230 decibels, making it the loudest sound produced by an animal.  The male we saw in the photos above is a migrant whale.  The captain did locate a second whale which is a resident whale named Aoraki.  The waters here are too cold for female sperm whales.  The males actually have more fat than the females.  All too soon it was time to return to shore.

Later in the day we went to visit a New Zealand Fur Seal colony.  We sat on rocks above the group and watched the pups play "king of the rock", tug of war with a piece of kelp, frolic in the water and push each other around like Sumo wrestlers.

The adults napped on the rocks, keeping one eye open on the pups.  One handsome fellow posed nicely for Marc.

 

We had the rare privilege of swimming with Dusky Dolphins.  I wasn't sure if I'd get up the nerve to enter the water but once I saw the dolphins and with a flotation device, I slipped carefully into the water. 

The initial shock of the 64 degree water made it hard to breath.  I soon relaxed as I saw my first Dusky Dolphins glide below me.  What beautiful graceful creatures they are!  I made noises through my snorkel  to attract them.  I'm not sure if it worked but more dolphins did swim past and below me. After swimming with the dolphins we had a photo shoot.  The captain brought us along a huge pod of dolphins, maybe 200-300!   The dusky dolphin (Lagenorhynchus obscurus)  is commonly found along the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand.  They can grow up to six and a half feet in length and weigh as much as 200 pounds.  Dusky dolphins can live up to 20 to 25 years.  The dolphins were really putting on a show with their spectacular leaps, jumps, side slaps, back flips and somersaults.  Marc was able to catch some of their amazing acrobatics.

 

Lastly we went on an Albatross tour.  I wasn't quite sure what to expect but was somewhat surprised when our guide threw a basket of chum off the back of the boat to attract the birds.  It didn't

take long for the Wandering Albatross, Northern Giant Petrels and Cape Petrels to show up.

I must admit it was a great way to get a close look at the birds.  We noticed a pink color on the necks of some of the Wandering Albatrosses that we had not seen before. 

Gibson's Wandering Albatross

Our guide told us that it was believed to be breeding plumage or bacteria growing on salt deposits that the Albatross excretes from it's nostrils.  We also got a good look at a Salvin and Northern Royal Albatross, two new species for us. 

Salvin's Albatross

Northern Royal Albatross

When flying, all albatrosses looked similar to me.  When viewed up close you can really see the difference in size, bill coloration and plumage.  Near the end of the tour, Tracy, our guide dumped the remainder of the chum into the water creating quite a feeding frenzy.

We're in the San Francisco Airport waiting for our flight to Chicago.  We will arrive on Thursday morning after spending the night in Chicago.  We look forward to catching up with everyone.
Peggy and Marc