Harvest from Land and Sea
16 February 2012 | Flamingo Cay, Jumentoes
Jill
This morning Bud decided to explore the south end of the island by dinghy while I took the trail running from the beach where we're anchored north. I had more success than he did. The trail led through a low part of the interior of the island. There are salt ponds there, places just below sea level where salt water comes in and evaporates. They aren't joined directly to the ocean at all. In one of these I spotted a number of bright red shrimp. When I showed Bud the picture of them later he reminded me that Flamingos are pink from eating those shrimp. So there are still a few shrimp here, but we haven't seen any Flamingos on Flamingo Cay. I did get a close up of another larger species of lizard. The trail then led to a beach at the north end and from there I was able to walk across the ironshore to the Atlantic side. Along the way I found four sea beans. These weren't the striped hamburger beans, but they were nice large sea beans. I took quite a few pictures that I'll add to the gallery when I can.
Bud met me back at the beach where we are anchored at 1 PM. After we ate he wanted to try snorkeling some of the deeper coral heads and asked if I'd go and tend the dinghy for him, because it would be too deep to anchor it. I reluctantly said yes, because driving the dinghy around in slow circles is not my idea of a great time. I declined taking a turn at snorkeling under those conditions, also. So we set off, but when we got over towards the north end of the island Bud decided to just snorkel up near the rocks that jut out from this island to the northwest. It was still a bit deep, but we could anchor the dinghy. Had I known that I might have brought my snorkeling gear. I would have at least brought a book. Oh well, I sat in the boat and watched the sun and sea while Bud tried to catch something with his spear. He missed a big lionfish, but he did find three conchs. These are the first live conchs we've seen. They were in fairly deep water, but Bud was able to dive down and get them. We brought them back and got Fuzzy and the things we'd need to clean the conch (including the book for instructions) and went ashore. It took Bud abot an hour to clean them. By time he was done (added to all the snorkeling he'd done) he was too tired to cook them. So the conch went in the freezer and we had curried rice for dinner. But now Bud has conch guts for bait, so he's thinking he'll catch some snapper for sure. We'll see.