Thing-a-ma-bobs and What-cha-ma-who-sits
Hello there! Anyone still reading? I didn't fall off the internet. I just snuck away to the Caribbean for a week to hunt for some sanity in the sand. The boy and I joined my parents in St. Maarten in the Dutch West Indies. The flight down was uneventful, and landed us in vacationland around 1 in the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to reintroduce ourselves to the sun before dinnertime.
The villa we stayed in was gorgeous - right on the beach in Cupecoy Bay, with two porches overlooking the surf. This was our view for the last 7 days:
We started our trip with a sunset cruise around the island on a friend's catamaran (seriously, my parents know half the people on the island) and dinner on the water. Here's a cute picture of my parents cuddling on the boat:
The next day we visited the Butterfly Farm, which is a small netted enclosure with tiny paths and lots of plants and more butterflies than you can shake a stick at. My dad managed to handle a few of them, and one even crawled around on my hand for a while. The butterflies don't take island living for granted: like most of the tourists, they spend most of their time at the bar.
These are Owl butterflies. They subsist mostly on the juice of rotting fruit that falls on the forest floor. To simulate this, the owners of the Butterfly Farm slice up fruit and leave it out in the hot sun to ferment. After a few sips, the Owl butterflies are more than a little wobbly. They fall over while drinking, and fly lopsided when they get up again, which doesn't matter much because they're usually just flying over to the next piece of fruit for another drink.
My boy did not get the hold a butterfly, but he did find the world's smallest froglet:
I thought it was a tiny bug at first. It was hopping about while we tried to snap the picture, so I wasn't able to see it clearly until I went back to look at the photos on my camera, and sure enough - froglet! For scale, the width of the photo is the width of my boy's pointer finger. Yeah. It's that small.
We also saw the world's biggest moth: the Atlas Moth. This one just crawled out of its cocoon!
Absolutely gorgeous! Many more photos of butterflies here - just click the link and start tabbing through the "Older" photos to see 'em all!
Even after the Butterfly Farm, we were not at a loss for neat things to poke. The beach in front of our villa was home to quite a few snail apartments, with lots of little baby snails growing up safe and sound in the crannies of the rocks that lined the beach.
And keeping the snails company were creatures none of us had ever seen before. I present to you, the West Indian Chiton:
After a bit of research I learned that these buggers can move around quite a bit. They're mostly stationary during the day, though, so I only got to see them napping, and therefore firmly adhered to the rock.
Our walk back from the beach was often accompanied by the skitterings of Anole lizards. Sometimes they would pose for us.
There were even little crabs living in burrows right below our porch. They would come out in the morning and creep around in the shadows, visiting each other and then popping back into their holes like some tropical whack-a-mole game.
We got to see some underwater critters as well! My parents graciously treated us to a glass-bottom boat tour in one of the coral reefs. We got to see tons of fish, stingrays, sea urchins, coral and anemones, and even a few sea turtles!!!!
I've got this picture set as my computer background right now. It's helping me thwart reality. I think for the next few days, at least, my brain will still be in St. Maarten, even if my body is here in gray, rainy Syracuse.
The villa we stayed in was gorgeous - right on the beach in Cupecoy Bay, with two porches overlooking the surf. This was our view for the last 7 days:
We started our trip with a sunset cruise around the island on a friend's catamaran (seriously, my parents know half the people on the island) and dinner on the water. Here's a cute picture of my parents cuddling on the boat:
The next day we visited the Butterfly Farm, which is a small netted enclosure with tiny paths and lots of plants and more butterflies than you can shake a stick at. My dad managed to handle a few of them, and one even crawled around on my hand for a while. The butterflies don't take island living for granted: like most of the tourists, they spend most of their time at the bar.
These are Owl butterflies. They subsist mostly on the juice of rotting fruit that falls on the forest floor. To simulate this, the owners of the Butterfly Farm slice up fruit and leave it out in the hot sun to ferment. After a few sips, the Owl butterflies are more than a little wobbly. They fall over while drinking, and fly lopsided when they get up again, which doesn't matter much because they're usually just flying over to the next piece of fruit for another drink.
My boy did not get the hold a butterfly, but he did find the world's smallest froglet:
I thought it was a tiny bug at first. It was hopping about while we tried to snap the picture, so I wasn't able to see it clearly until I went back to look at the photos on my camera, and sure enough - froglet! For scale, the width of the photo is the width of my boy's pointer finger. Yeah. It's that small.
We also saw the world's biggest moth: the Atlas Moth. This one just crawled out of its cocoon!
Absolutely gorgeous! Many more photos of butterflies here - just click the link and start tabbing through the "Older" photos to see 'em all!
Even after the Butterfly Farm, we were not at a loss for neat things to poke. The beach in front of our villa was home to quite a few snail apartments, with lots of little baby snails growing up safe and sound in the crannies of the rocks that lined the beach.
And keeping the snails company were creatures none of us had ever seen before. I present to you, the West Indian Chiton:
After a bit of research I learned that these buggers can move around quite a bit. They're mostly stationary during the day, though, so I only got to see them napping, and therefore firmly adhered to the rock.
Our walk back from the beach was often accompanied by the skitterings of Anole lizards. Sometimes they would pose for us.
There were even little crabs living in burrows right below our porch. They would come out in the morning and creep around in the shadows, visiting each other and then popping back into their holes like some tropical whack-a-mole game.
We got to see some underwater critters as well! My parents graciously treated us to a glass-bottom boat tour in one of the coral reefs. We got to see tons of fish, stingrays, sea urchins, coral and anemones, and even a few sea turtles!!!!
I've got this picture set as my computer background right now. It's helping me thwart reality. I think for the next few days, at least, my brain will still be in St. Maarten, even if my body is here in gray, rainy Syracuse.