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 ABOUTGeneralfeatured: 30 Best Snorkeling Blogs Fun Ways to enjoy the caribbeanJan 17, 12 Comments Off
Good evening friends, I found a little Curacao Honey Bee, Apis mellifera for you all tonight who was so busy with his Pollinating duties that she never once gave me a second look. The whole island is blooming right now and many of the beautiful flowers like this one, are just weeds. I need to find a book on Caribbean weeds, just about all of them have beautiful flowers. Just like wasps, bees live in large colonies Ruled by a “Queen Bee” who lays all the eggs! Yeah sounds like a lot of work! The workers (in this case sterile females) take care of all those eggs and larvae which is where the expression “Busy as a Bee” comes from!! Bees collect pollen and nectar from flowers which are used to feed the larvae and themselves. The nest is built out of many combs which consist of hexagonal cells made of wax. Bees may sting but they will do so only when their own lives are in danger. The fact is that when they sting they lose their own life! The sting is actually a modified ovipositor and possesses barbs. Once inserted it cannot be withdrawn so when the bee tears itself loose it rips open it’s own abdomen and dies! Of course bees play a very important role in carrying pollen from one plant to the next (as you see here), in this way taking care of the fertilization in plants. without bees many of our agricultural crops would not yield the harvest they do now. Here is Curacao the locals call these Honey Bees, Abeha and in Dutch it’s called a Bij.
We just had a real hard rain and the little frogs are now going crazy!! I stayed home sick all day but am feeling better, tomorrow is a busy sub day so I sure hope I am able to dive!
Off to bed, be well, Barry
Jan 17, 12 Comments Off
Good morning from sickville AGAIN!! Now I am sick with another stupid cold and Aimee is still fighting hers. We currently have a record amount of people sick at work which means those who aren’t sick soon will be. I even ran into an old friend out walking his dogs and he was so sick with the flu he could hardly walk, I didn’t even shake his hand, I just yelled “Happy New Year” and ran past him at full speed!
Our island still looks like a Brazilian rainforest even though the rains have stopped considerably. Most of the island is currently covered in this carpet of pink flowers called Coral Vines or Bride’s Tears, Antigonon leptopus and it’s more or less killing everything underneath. In this photo there is supposed to be a big beautiful tree on the right but with all the rain this plant completely covered it! The Coral vine is very difficult to remove as it possesses small tubers which can grow quite deep into the ground. After the rains these tubers will rapidly sprout new vines and within a short time everything will again be covered by this plant! The leaves are oblong heart-shaped and make a knobby impression. The flowers hang down in large fiery rose-red branches. There also exists a variety with white flowers and to see a large area of this color variation is truly a sight to behold, it’s like a blanket of snow covering everything.
Hope all is well out there, miss you guys!! Barry
Jan 15, 12 Comments Off
“Stijn Watches While Tico Takes A GIANT Leap Into The Sea”
“North Coast Cave Fed By The Ocean”
“Riding Thru Playa Canoa”
“The Giant Windmills Have Been Torn Down”
“Stijn Checking Out The Landhouse At Koral Tabak” Good evening friends, Stijn and I just got home from a super fun three hour mountain-bike ride along our wild and windy rough North coast. We started our ride today near a little town called Montana and rode first to Saint Joris bay. The wind was pretty heavy today making our ride really fun in one direction and not so fun in the other! We followed the waters edge at Saint Joris until we ran out of waters edge and then headed up and over a little mountain sending us straight down into where the ocean feeds Saint Joris bay, we call it the North coast. We immediately ran into my work colleagues Tico and Michiel who were on there way for a dive/lobster hunt but to get there they had to jump off this insane rock wall into very rough water! My question was and still is, “how do you get back out”?? Stijn and I both looked at each other shaking our heads and said, “no thanks”, those guys are crazy! From there you can follow a very rough but beautiful and fun two track four-wheel drive road along the whole North coast. Our next stop was this cool cave that is fed underground by the ocean. Many folks come here on calm North coast days and dive here but so far I have never done it. They say you just enter the cave as you see here with all your scuba gear on and dive under a big section of rocky shore-line and “presto” your out in the ocean! As I have been told the hard part is finding the hole to get back, just not sure I’m up for that yet, maybe after a few thousand more dives! Our next stop was Playa Canoa and seconds after taking this photo we got soaked by a surprise tropical storm, there was no where to run! Canoa is a favorite spot for surfers here in Curacao as you can see and it’s also one of the only semi-protected bays for fisherman so they use it to park their boats and have a cool little rustic village set up here. Soaked to the bone we carried on and headed West but soon we got hit with another downpour and within seconds the ground was soaked and we were caked in mud! So you guessed it we turned around and started back, now heading directly into the wind and let me tell you, that was zero fun! After drafting Stijn for around 15 minutes we finally came to what is now left of the giant windmills. The blades are all gone, must have been hauled away and all that remain are these big posts that once held the spinning giants in place. Not sure what they are doing out there but it looks like they may be building new ones, stay tuned if I hear something I will pass it along. Our final adventure of the day was riding our bikes up to this beautiful old 1800′s Landhouse. Stijn said it’s called “Landhouse Coral Tabak” which makes sense to me. He rode around investigating the whole scene while I took photos, and I think it’s safe to say we had a great time here! It was now getting late and we were still quite a ways from home so off we went back into the wind, fun, fun, fun!! We did make one more stop and that was to watch the illegal races at the speedway we have here in Curacao. It happens every Sunday evening on a paved stretch of road about a half mile in length. They race everything they can find, we even say a kid doing a long wheelie on a moped! We managed to get back to Stijn’s house just before dark and I was thankful to be done, that wind is just enough to drive one crazy! It’s so much fun having a strong tailwind but turning around and riding into it for an hour and a half is just not a good time! Fun ride. We did a whole lot of trail work on Saturday morning and on Sunday, it’s starting to look like a mountain bike park out there! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend, see you again soon, Barry Jan 13, 12 Comments Off
Good evening friends, it’s FRIDAY!! I hope that means many of you get to have a long and fun weekend but I am sure that some will end up having to work. Aimee woke up sick and didn’t go into work and I wasn’t feeling much better. It’s yet another case of everyone around us is sick again and there’s just no way to avoid it! Being that I was feeling down as well I decided to immediately head for the ocean for a big dose of salt-water which the locals claim will cure almost anything! I quickly assembled my camera into it’s underwater housing, loaded the 105 macro lens, put the special port on, charged the batteries and did a quick test, it was good to go. Then I found my long wet-suit and warm booties as the water now is the coldest it’s been all year, good for the corals and sea-life, bad for divers! Honestly this was one of the first dives where I was actually cold and wasn’t having a great time, I couldn’t feel my hands! Minutes into the dive I spotted this big adult “bicolor variation” Coney, Cephalopholis fulva hiding or hanging out under a beautiful gorgonian with his smaller girlfriend. This is a Sea Bass and like all bass they have heavy bodies and large lips not to mention big mouths!! At first when I arrived he was somewhat nervous but then I quietly laid down in the sand in front of him and just waited for the next 15 minutes while he became more and more brave. These fish like so many others are very territorial, he chased off two parrotfish and a squirrelfish that got to close and I am sure he opened his mouth for me saying; ”get out of here” in fish language!! Normally these fish are seen in shades of reddish brown to brown, kind of all one color, these bicolor one’s are harder to find and much more beautiful! There is also a bright yellow variation with electric blue spots, that one is down right spectacular and can be found all over the reefs in Bonaire. This guy here was around 12-13 inches in length and can get to be 16 inches in length. I normally never see these fish deeper than 60 feet either, they seem to love the 40 foot zone but occasionally I will see one hanging out right near the surface in 10 feet of water.
Dinner is calling and I need to get to bed early as Stijn and I are doing trail work early in the morning. Have a wonderful weekend, talk to you Sunday night or Monday morning.
Barry
Jan 12, 12 Comments Off
Sunny Curacao greetings everyone. Here is a great baby dolphin shot! This little one is Kanoa. You may recall that Playa Kanoa is a local beach and that is what we named him after. He just turned one year old on December 8th, and isn’t he a super cutie! I think he is one of the cutest babies we have ever had, with his great big eyes and little face and he just loves playing with the trainers and bugging his best friend Roxette. His favorite game is for Roxy to have fish in her mouth and he swims after her trying to get at it. He recently began eating fish himself and now thinks that all fish just must be intended for him. Of course after he is done chasing Roxy he also loves jumping over her, in general just jumping all over the lagoon, like a little horse running all over the field. She is a great Auntie and is very patient and you can often find the two of them hamming it up all over the place. He often has the trainers laughing so hard they almost fall off the platform. His mother is Renata and father is Copan, so he is sure to have both good looks and brains. Can’t wait to see this little fellow in a year or two!
On another note, Aimee picked up a little dog over by the big Chapman boat today and took her in for a vet check and vaccinations. She is super sweet and we have both fallen in love with her from the moment we saw her. She is about 20 weeks old, a female and black and brown. Aimee has named her Lola. Yesterday she got things going by bringing food and water bowls to her area by the big ship. The worker guys have been taking pretty good care of her, feeding her and even giving her stuff for worms and ticks and fleas. For a street dog she looks great. But, more surprising is how much she loves people. She will wiggle out of her skin at the very sight of you and then runs over for some loving. Aimee spent 2 hours at the vet clinic, mostly just waiting for her turn, but in the meantime had a great time walking her around and doing some socializing by just letting her see and hear everything. What a wonderful little one. We are going to get her vaccinations completed, and get her sterilized and go from there. So, you may hear about Lola in the future.
I trust all is well with my groupies out there, sure do miss all you guys!!
Later, Barry
Jan 12, 12 Comments Off
Good morning friends, here is my newest find. This is a beautiful Hermit Crab, Coenobita Clypeatus pronounced seen-oh-bit-a cly-pe-ait-us. There are seven species of Hermit Crabs that inhabit tropical regions throughout the world and that live in discarded snail shells for their entire adult lives, changing to larger shells as they grow. Land hermit crabs are omnivorous. They feed on all kinds of vegetable matter, as well as on protein-rich food, especially decaying flesh. Here in Curacao, native fruits, such as cactus fruits and the supposedly poisonous “apples” of the Manchineal Tree are devoured eagerly, and fresh droppings of horses and cows are used as a source of both food and water. I also find them near or on “Dog Poop” they seem to just love that stuff, and once again I say, “nothing organic goes to waste.
This one here was lucky enough to find a fossil Chicoreus shell and as you can see is proudly showing it off! Chicoreus is a genus of medium to large sized (extant) predatory sea snails. These are carnivorous marine gastropod mollusks in the family Muricidae, the murexes or rock snails. I have never found a new shell like this in the water but occasionally find them high in the hills coming out from the soil where they were deposited or died hundreds or thousands of years ago. The other good side to finding and wearing a fossil shell as opposed to a new one just washed up on the shore is that it’s much stronger! OK, it’s much heavier but from my personal observations here weight doesn’t seem to bother these guys much, they are strong!
And thanks to our friend Diane here in Curacao, she was able to identify the flower from yesterday! Your not going to believe this, it’s a flower from a Cotton Plant! Look below and read about it, very cool, thanks again Diane!!
It’s off to the sea for me, have a great day!!
Barry
Jan 11, 12 Comments Off
Good morning friends, here’s something cool, this the flower from a cotton plant,Gossypium hirsutum that I found growing behind the Curacao Sea Aquarium. Gossypium hirsutum is a soft, fluffy, staple fiber that grows in a form known as a boll around the seeds of the cotton plant, a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, India and Africa. The fiber most often is spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable textile, that is a most widely used natural-fiber in clothing today. Through genetic assistance and breeding, today’s cottons have evolved from these “wild” sources and are more processing friendly. Currently, there are five prominent types of cotton being grown commercially around the world: Egyptian, Sea Island, American Pima, Asiatic and Upland. In addition to the textile industry, cotton is in fishnets, coffee filters, tents, gunpowder (see Nitrocellulose), cotton paper, and in bookbinding. The cottonseed which remains after the cotton is ginned is used to produce cottonseed oil, which, after refining, can be consumed by humans like any other vegetable oil. The cottonseed meal that is left generally is fed to ruminant livestock. Cottonseed hulls can be added to dairy cattle rations for roughage. The top leading producers of cotton are China, India, US, Pakistan and Egypt. The five leading exporters of cotton are (1) the United States, (2) India, (3) Uzbekistan, (4) Brazil, and (5) Australia. The cotton plant is grown from seed and usually bears fruit or bolls in about 100 days after planting. Around 45 days after, the cotton boll will begin to naturally split open along the bolls segments or carpels and dry out, exposing the underlying cotton segments called locks. An average boll will contain nearly 500,000 fibers of cotton and each plant may bear up to 100 bolls.
Not much going on at the moment things seem to be fairly quiet here. Stijn and I went for a fast ride last night but I ended up having some bike problems due to a new swing-arm I put on yesterday, will have to take it in to the shop today.
Aimee and I are taking the dogs to the North coast early this morning, I need to pick up some wood that I left there a few days ago. Have a great day,
Barry
Jan 10, 12 Comments Off
Good morning from Curacao. Here is a common site if your touring the North side of Curacao or Saint Joris Bay, TRASH!! And I must say it’s not just here, we have seen trash like this at every beach we have ever been to especially in Mexico. Most of the trash here consists of plastic bottles or plastic containers but of course as you can see it’s a big mixture of everything! Did you know that;
Although it can be easy and convenient to pick up bottle beverage products the end cost to the environment is staggering. So be mindful when you drink…and remember, friends don’t let friends drink from disposables! The good side to these trash piles if there is one is that it’s also filled with many useable or recyclable products like all the driftwood! This is just one of the many little Boca’s/inlets I frequent in search of wood to build my furniture and necklace holders, every day something new comes in!! These piles are also homes to many creatures like hermit crabs, rabbits, and even quail so I usually have to be very careful when digging thru this stuff. The rain seems to have stopped here in Curacao and the sun is back! I did one dive with the sub yesterday and again noticed how cold the water is still this year, quite a difference from last year! Hope everyone has a wonderful day, I am off to go diving, be well, Barry Jan 8, 12 Comments Off
Hello again, Aimee here with your “Anna the flamingo” update. Anna arrived on our doorstep one week ago today and is really making great progress. At almost every break we are doing something with her, tube feeding or some flamingo physical therapy. This is Eline once again, showing you the walking hammock she made for Anna so that she can be supported, but still get those thin legs moving! Anna is getting better, but was very uncoordinated, weak and had no stamina at all. We try to get her out and moving 4-5 times a day, and bit by bit she is getting better. Yesterday evening I was letting her rest after a walking session, when she began trying to get up all by herself. Yea! Today was even better, with me mostly supporting her with one hand, no longer using the hammock and she even ate some brine shrimp on her own. Things are looking great! Wish us luck and stay tuned for the next fun update. Ok, cool stuff, Barry here now, you get us both tonight, it’s a two for one special!! I had a typical crazy-fast paced Sunday and can hardly wait to get to bed! My day started with finding a beautiful hermit crab in a super cool fossil shell. I then spent the next hour following him around the beach and trying hard to take his photo, not as easy as it sounds and I promise to send the photo this week. So after an hour and a half out in the jungle and playing on the beach I then raced to meet Aimee at Dolphin Academy to photograph her holding the baby flamingo. After that I went home and got my bike ready and headed out for a three hour/40 mile ride. I left the house at 11:00 with five large water bottles, food, long sleeve jersey, all my camera gear and my medical kit and took off for the North coast. My goal was to find and photograph some of the worst trash areas along the North coast and yes I will be sending you one or two of those photos as well this week, you can’t believe the junk I found! While rumaging thru one of the big messes I found a cool piece of driftwood that looks like a seahorse but unfortunatly I had to leave it there, no room to carry it! I did hide it well and will go back ASAP to retrive it and give it a good home. For those of you who don’t know all the gigantic windmills at Canoa are gone!! Yep, every single one of them! We had these giant windmills on the North coast but “poof” they are gone! I had a great ride today, it was long and super hot but what a beautiful day to be out in the middle of nowhere! That’s kind of my weekend, I did photograph a bunch of new flowers tonight as well, this was really a big photo weekend for me! Have a great Monday, I will be underwater with the sub and the fish! Barry and Aimee Jan 7, 12 Comments Off
Good morning everyone, Aimee here. Well, as you can see by the photo we have a new, fun project at the Curacao Sea Aquarium. Her name is Anna and she is a baby flamingo! On the first of January a lady by the name of Anna found this little flamingo on the beach at the Hilton Hotel. We are guessing because of the crazy “New Years Eve fireworks” she somehow ended up flying in the wrong direction or got scared during the night and ended up here. Anna immediately brought it to the Sea Aquarium knowing someone there would know how to help her. Well, our veterinarian, Tom, has had a lot of experience with hand-raising young flamingos, so he and our vet assistant, Eline got right to work making a fluid diet, consisting of water, shrimps, fish, egg yolks, vitamins and minerals, and making a hammock support system for her. We believe she is a fledgling, and would have been newly separated from her mother. She was mostly underweight, and weak. In the photo you can see the set-up that Eline made, it allows Anna to stand, which flamingos do the majority of the time, and get circulation through their body and to have correct thermoregulation. Eline will tube feed Anne four times a day, and we also give her some walking exercise, which is a riot. For this she is taken out of her home and gently placed in another hammock-type system that can be held by strings making her look very much like a little toy flamingo puppet. We give her slight support, wanting to build up her strength, coordination and stamina. She is mostly wobbly and weaving, but is getting stronger each day. So, you never know what kind of project will walk in our front door. I just have a great big “thank you” and “great job” for our animal care staff. They go above and beyond every day and this is just one more example. Barry is off and is heading out to work on trails which are getting worse by the day because of all the rain. At 12:15 he will come over and photograph our new flamingo baby getting it’s exercise, will send that photo out next! Have a wonderful weekend, Aimee Jan 6, 12 Comments Off
Good morning friends, finally we are back! Our website host had a big problem on their end leaving us down and out for a few days but all is good again! So let’s see, I have around three days to get you caught up on but should be easy as it’s been fairly quiet around here. Scott, Tammi and Hannah left here at four in the afternoon on Wednesday. I got an e-mail yesterday saying they arrived back home yesterday safe and sound, we sure enjoyed having them and will miss our South Dakota family a lot! I have been riding with Stijn quite a bit this week but am still not fully recovered from my last two severe colds that I picked up but I am feeling much better. Stijn will be traveling with me this year to South Dakota where I will enter him in some mountain bike races and take him fossil collecting. I also am going to do a photo shoot with some Lakota Indians so that should make for some real nice blog photos. Here is the newest find by Substation Curacao, this is the MEGA RARE, Joboehlkia gladifer or as we are calling it here, “the Jonnyfish”. This is again another new species and will be named after Dutch’s son Jonny, you know him, Jonny the Lionfish Hunter!! This little inch and a half fish was found at around 600 feet in front of the Curacao Sea Aquarium. At 9:00 this morning I will be trying to photograph him again but this time with a little different background. It’s really amazing that there are so many new and colorful fish right out our front door just waiting to be discovered and you lucky folks are again the first to see them. We have plans to make a book at the end of 2012 of all the new and wonderful creatures that have been found to date and that will be found this year. We have many top scientists arriving again this year which I am sure will mean many more new finds. Inca got bit again by a dog and has a bad wound on her side and is in a lot of pain! It happened on a walk Wednesday morning and oddly no one saw or heard a thing? Very strange! That’s about it, have a wonderful day!!!!!! Barry
Jan 2, 12 Comments Off
Happy New Year!!!!!!!!! Ok, I’m a day late but what’s new? I hope everyone out there had a great weekend and a safe but fun evening. On Saturday, New Years Eve day I did four dives with the sub! Yep, we had a family of 16 that all went in the sub, they were from a cruise-ship so we really had to hurry and get them back to the docks before 4:00. By 5:00 I was wiped out and not feeling well and ended up staying home with the dogs New Years Eve while, Aimee took the gang on a fantastic boat ride with Dutch and his family to ring in the new year! As hard as I tried to sleep thru the noise it was just impossible and in the end just tried to keep the dogs from barking and going crazy. I think the whole gang came back home from their boat-trip at around 1:30 in the morning and again we all tried to sleep but it was non-stop fireworks all around us till 5:00 am!! I ended up getting 20 minutes sleep the whole night and just gave up and took the dogs out for a long walk early Sunday morning joined by Stijn. We had a great New Years Day walk along the North coast and collected driftwood and other fun stuff while the dogs ran and ran and ran! At 10:00 I took the whole gang to Caracas Bay for a “New Years Dive” at tugboat and finally little Hannah did a 32 minute dive!!! This was officially her first real dive in the ocean and we were all glad to be part of it! I think today they are headed to Puerto Mari for another dive and to just spend the whole day relaxing on the beach. That’s about it, we have all been very busy trying to get in as much fun time as we can with our guests before they leave. Once again, Happy New year!! Talk more tomorrow, Barry Dec 31, 11 Comments Off
Good morning Aimee here, this is the last day of the year, so let’s all make the best of today. Meet momma Renata and baby Kanoa. Kanoa just turned one year old in December. I know I have said this before, but I will say it again, he is one of the most beautiful babies ever! Just take a look at his huge baby eyes, and he has a pretty unique yellowish color on his sides as well. I had to laugh yesterday when Barry came over to this lagoon with me. We had our friends Tammi and Hannah in the water with Renata, Roxette and Kanoa, and suddenly he just went crazy, racing and jumping everywhere. He had us all laughing until our sides ached. At one point he jumped so high and out of control he almost did an entire flip. Wow. Too much fun. Barry is sick again with another cold but somehow managed to do three dives with the sub yesterday?? Today they have a family of 16 arriving from the States and they are all going for a ride in the sub, it will be crazy over there!! Our guests kept very busy yesterday, they first swam with the dolphins and then Scott went for a sub ride down to 500 plus feet! Then at 6:00 Scott and Tammi went on a night dive in front of the Sea Aquarium while Hannah and I took the dogs for a long walk thru the Curacao rain-forest! Barry came home wiped-out, ate dinner standing up and went straight to bed, not sure how he will make it today? Well, thanks for another wonderful year and all the support and help! Hope you all have a fun but safe evening, it will be one crazy night here that’s for sure!! Happy New Year from Curacao!! Aimee, Barry, Indi, Inca, Nila (the cat) Dec 29, 11 Comments Off
Good evening from Curacao!! First off I have not one, not two but three super-fun links to share with you all tonight. The first comes from my Uncle Tom in Florida and it’s the hands down craziest snowmobile video I have ever seen! Here is the link; Snowmobile; http://www.zapiks.fr/share/player.swf?file=50284 The next one was a gift from Stijn and it’s one of the scariest singletrack trails I have ever seen, I wouldn’t walk this trail let along ride it but these three brave guys do, check it out!! Crazy Singletrack!!! http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/1895321/209ce21d/zelfmoord_mountainbike_trail.html And the third one this evening is from our house guest Scott. After the first clip there will be a Butterfinger commercial followed by an even better clip with a dog barking at a cat, that could be one of the funniest ones I have ever seen! Thank’s Scott!! Cat Fight; http://comedy.video.yahoo.com/?lid=24038736&vid=27449967 So once again you folks out there who are tuning in on a daily basis get to be the FIRST humans on Earth to see yet another mega-rare and very valuable deep-water fish. This is a juvenile Golden Basslet, Liopropoma abberans and he’s about an inch and a half in length and was found at around 400 feet!! As this fish gets older it will change drastically! It will first lose the red and white spot on it’s tail and be replaced by pure yellow. Then the spots on his body will start to disappear and the pinkish-red color will also be replaced by yellow. In the end all that will remain of his colors now are the yellow stripe through his eye and a small amount of pink or red on his fore-head, pretty cool huh?? I won’t even tell you how much this fish is worth because you would think I was lying! These beautiful little bass are ferocious hunters and can and will attack without any warning at all! They eat just about anything including small mice shrimps, crabs and fish and spend their days hiding in the rocks. We sure had a crazy morning at Saint Joris!!! We got there at 8:00 and of course it was already muddy and wet but we were going hiking any ways!! Off in the distance we all saw storm clouds building and knew it was just a matter of time before it got to us. I kept saying; “guys, I think we better start looking for shelter” but we were so far away from the car that there was really no where to run! So, next best thing, start looking for junk on the beach to use as an umbrella because it’s coming! I found a pink plastic toilet seat cover and gave it Hannah and then found more plastic sheeting and started handing it out and told everyone to run and find some place to hide because in about 2 minutes we are going to be soaked! You could see a wall of water coming towards us and everything behind it slowly disappeared under a curtain of rain! I quickly removed my back-pack and dumped out all the driftwood and crawled under a big driftwood tree with Inca. I then made us a roof that Inca could stand under and seconds later down it came!! At that time I didn’t even know where the rest of the group was but was hoping they found shelter. The rain came down so hard and once it stopped I found out that everyone else was just huddled together out in the open soaked to the bone! They said that being under the tree got them even more wet! So, Inca was dry and I was half dry everyone else looked like they just went swimming! After our shower we continued the hike walking thru more mud, thorns, broken glass, mosquito infested bogs and crawling under downed trees and bushes, didn’t want anyone saying the hike was boring!! We all returned home wet and muddy with our collection of driftwood and beach treasures, heck Stijn found a surf-board!! After that ordeal I went into work to photograph the fish above, the boys went diving and the girls took a nap. Later in the afternoon everyone left for a tour of downtown Punda on the water-front and I stayed home to get this out to you. That’s our day, what did you do?? Be back tomorrow, Barry Dec 29, 11 Comments Off
Good morning one and all, how are you all doing?? Many out there on my daily e-mail list still don’t know about my “DELL computer crashing and that there won’t be any more daily blogs sent out as an e-mail any more but one by one they are checking in. Yesterday we were super busy at the Substation and this Friday and Saturday are completely full as well which means I will be in the water a lot! Our guests took off yesterday on a tour of the island led by my buddy Stijn who is now out of school because of Christmas and is able to hang out with the crazy Americans. He ended up taking them to Puerto Mari and from the sound of it they all had a wonderful time! Puerto Mari is our “Best Family Beach” that we have in Curacao, it’s clean, safe and has great diving, snorkeling and food, what more do you need?? Scott and Tammi who own a dive shop in the States have been trying hard to get their nine year old daughter Hannah to go diving. So far she has not gone under the water but has again promised that if they take her back to Puerto Mari again she will do it, so lets cross our fingers!! The fireworks have started here already which has poor Inca scared to death! It’s looking like one of us will have to stay home with the dogs New Years Eve and comfort them from the noise, if that is even possible. We were invited by Dutch to go on a boat and watch the island attempt to blow itself up from the safety of the water so that’s sounding pretty good!! This morning the whole gang including Stijn are going to Saint Joris for a walk along the coast to collect driftwood and treasures. It rained again last night so it will be a muddy mess but like I say, “if you can see thru the mud and trash, it’s a treasure trove”! Well, that’s about it for today. We are still eating my moms homemade fudge and cookies (which I even took to work) and loving the Highlander Groog coffee and all the fun gifts we just got for Christmas, thank you all once again!! I had a request for a photo of our bird RUFO that resides at Dolphin Academy. He is doing well as you can see and continues to entertain the guests on a daily basis! We Love him! Time to go for a walk, the dogs are so excited, Barry SITE MAP
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