All About GOD - Growing Relationships with Jesus and Others

Creatures from Other Places (Florida and the Caribbean)

These photos are from a month long trip to Florida and a two-week Caribbean cruise most of May of 2012 as a graduation and farewell gift for my German friend Annea as she prepared to return home to Stuttgart, Germany to begin working on her Doctorate. She had never seen the ocean and tropics before. In November, she would return to the area on her honeymoon. I will try to stay with the nature theme along with adding a few general photos of interest. Sunrise and sunset photos from the trip are posted at the end of the discussion "The Glory of Scenery touched by our God".

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Permalink Reply by Ricprimus on May 27, 2013 at 7:20am

Mostly ripe coffee beans ready to be picked and shipped to the Falmouth processing factory.

Permalink Reply by Ricprimus on May 27, 2013 at 7:30am

Annea captured this gorgeous photo of a Jamaican Oriel on a hanging orchid at the plantation.

Permalink Reply by Ricprimus on May 27, 2013 at 12:37pm

Up before dawn the 15th, on board the ship we had a hearty breakfast of ham, pancakes smothered with a Florida pancake glaze and whipped cream, we put on our old sneakers, big straw hats and sunglasses, and our buckets and bags to go beachcombing for seashells and such. About midnight 4 hours of a series small tropical storms (squalls) had hit the area from offshore so we figured we should be able to get some nice shells. So back to the small cove of Winnifred Beach we went. Lot's of seaweed had washed up along the way and we poked in them and found a few, mostly broken shells. The cove beach was really heavy with seaweed and driftwood so we started wading a bit out. Photo here is Annea is standing knee deep in 2 feet of water: the water was so calm and clear you can see the knotwork detail on her Celtic toe rings).

Permalink Reply by Ricprimus on May 27, 2013 at 12:41pm

Jamaica Smaller shells, 1-2 inch, we got maybe half a 5 gal. bucket of these before we started making really nice finds and stopped picking them up.

Permalink Reply by Ricprimus on May 27, 2013 at 12:46pm

And a half bucket of Jamaican Large shells, over 2- 3 inches. We would have continued collection these two batches of regular shells all morning, but Annea saw a prize peeking out of a pile of seaweed on the beach which ended collecting normal shells.

Permalink Reply by Ricprimus on May 27, 2013 at 12:50pm

And that was this 10 inch nautilice, a relative of squid and octupii that has an external shell: a true prize of this area.

Permalink Reply by Ricprimus on May 27, 2013 at 12:56pm

So, we started poking through the seaweed, flipping over driftwood and keeping an eye on the shallow area of the small surf coming in and out. Our larger finds we made various piles along the beach, smaller ones went into our buckets. This pile was of sea urchins and conch shells (the type we had the meat as grilled steaks the day before). Biggest was about 16 inches long.