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
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Annea was the clear winner this day, with this extraordinary rare The Queen Conch, just recently dead. At right end you can see the green siphon tube which it sucks in water and food. Down the middle is the brown operculum, a leather like "door" that seals the shell when threatened - dries to a hard plastic like strip: professional collectors want the operculum along with the shell to show it was collected alive of just dead. A local shell dealer boiled the shell for us so the meat could be twisted out and brushed off much of the plant growth and barnacles on the back of the shell since we wanted it left natural. The operculum was stretched out to dry between bricks. Just a splendid treasure that went back to Germany with Annea (along with enough other shells from our trip) to force her to pay an overweight fee.
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Well, the beachcombing took us past noon the 15th, so we went back to the ship to drop off our prizes after filling the buckets with soapy water to soak. Then we spent the rest of the day on a beach blanket pretending we were lizards. That evening after dinner, the ship departed for arrival at Cozumel Mexico the 17th which would be the last stop for the Western part of the cruise.
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Cozumel, Mexico
Arriving at Cozumel the 17th, we found it a pretty place, but entirely developed for tourists. Shops, outdoor vendors restaurants and bars pretty much lined the entire beach and it was very hard to avoid not being given one sales pitch after another. Other than food and drink, we didn't buy anything since it was all imported. Photo isCozumel Beach from main docking Pier. -
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Cozumel, beach boardwalk. As said above, almost solid vendors. This one was shorts, t-shirts and ladies tops, all done with Mexican colors and themes. All "Made in China". Sigh.
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So we had a nice lunch of several plates of samples of various Mexican food, then took off to explore the sh6reline. There were many ruins from the Spanish conquest which had some interest for us, this was a very old fort ruins at beach end.
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This pretty fellow was sitting on a rock below the fort sunning himself.
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Walking a good deal along the rocky coast we found a nice secluded area to put our blanket down and do some of our own sunbathing. And we discovered why all the beaches were pretty much vacant of sun worshipers- sand fleas, and lots of them. Photo of a shot over Annea, heavily cropped because it was "that kind of beach" where you are allowed to let it all hang out. Which we did.
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We went back to the ship early to swim, get a bit of ointment from their clinic for the sand flea bites, danced a bit in the European-style disco, ate dinner then went to bed early, the ship left Cozumel just after dinner, headed back to Ft. Lauderdale to refuel, restock supplies and prepare for the East Caribbean cruise. As I said at the beginning, Royal Caribbean offers 2 cruises one to the west which we had just taken, and another to the eastern islands. Both are separate one week cruise packages starting at $999. a person. We were allowed to keep the same cabin from the first cruise, and leave out things, but were required to leave the ship about 10am and reboard at 5pm, Annea wanted to go back to Caspersen Beach to collect more shark teeth, so we did. We filled another 2 baggies of small teeth, and 3 more of the huge white shark ones. About 3pm we drove back to Ft. Lauderdale arriving at 4:30pm, and they allowed us to stroll past the long line of people waiting to board and walk to our room for a nap. (Lots of stares, some not happy at all, people must have thought we were VIPS - Annea certainly could be mistaken for a movie star).
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Nassau, Bahamas
We arrived at Nassau the 17th about 7am for a day and half stay, I had never made it this far east before and we both looked forward to a nice visit. The sky was cloudless and over 90 degree temperature, and we were waiting at one of the ships gangways as it docked.
Photo is the lighthouse at entrance to Nassau as we prepared to dock. -
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