Tuesday 29 October 2013

One frog two frog red frog blue frog

We have been out "on the hook," as they say, for over a week now and it has been excellent.  We've moved around every couple of days or so, following waypoints that our fellow cruisers Jim and Laura on Nilaya gave us, checking out the far corners of the archipelago.  There have been nice breezes, not too many bugs, and lots of wildlife, including frogs, jellyfish, rays, dolphins, pelicans, parrots and all kinds of little finches. Not everything holds still for pictures, but here is some of what I did capture.

Every island in the archipelago has its own coloured frog.  This cute green guy was on Jackson's Island, now owned by the Smithstonian Institute. On the way back it started to rain and the path was wet and muddy but you could see these guys jumping out of the way of our feet every 15 meters or so.  I didn't count, but I think I saw at least thirty!

He's harder to see, but in the middle of the log, about two thirds up, there is a very dark blue frog, almost black.  The spanish word for frog is rana, so he is rana azul / blue frog, which is also the name of a fun restaurant that we visited last weekend.

This is a strawberry poison dart frog and he lives on, you guessed it, Red Frog Island.  He is a tiny little thing, less than an inch long, but oh so cute.
My initial goal was to find somewhere where we could go swimming once we got out of the marina, which you wouldn't think would be that hard.  We often just swim off the back of the boat if the water is clean.  We dropped anchor at the first spot and the Captain yelled back "look over the side" - jellyfish, tons and tons of them!

It took several attempts to get any pictures of jellyfish that weren't just blurry water pictures.

These guys aren't very big, maybe 5 inches long, but the tenticles will sting, so no swimming off the boat.  We did get a great swim in at Red Frog Beach a couple of days later, though.

For being out amongst the mangroves, we also spent quite a bit of time socializing.  I'm not very good at remembering to take pictures during the parties, but I did get some boat pictures - does that count?

S/V Nilaya, home to Jim and Laura, temporarily anchored next to us in Cindi's Bay.

S/V IO of Cowes, crewed by Stuart and Susie who we met on Moonshadow when we went through the canal.
In other wildlife news, we have new boat pets - two charming geckos that eat bugs and like to chirp in the middle of the night. Of course, in honour of our previous boat pets, we thought it was only fitting that we name them "Phil" and "Jane."

Phil - he's about 2 inches long plus tail, definitely the bigger of the two.  Doesn't seem to eat as much as his namesake, though.

Jane - a tiny pretty gecko, comes out for a look and then goes back in again (probably reading a book on her kindle.)

After getting rid of garbage, bringing on more water, re-provisioning food and a few other boat jobs in town this weekend, we are off to starfish beach this afternoon.  I will let you know if it lives up to its name.

The kind of thing you get to enjoy when you escape the marina.