Friday 3/24:

Overnight it rained rather heavily, and it looked distinctly cloudy and hazy this morning. It cleared up a bit at times, but it’s been raining off and on through the day. I’m glad I decided to do as much swimming as I did earlier in the week, as today has really not been a great day for it.

I’ve been continuing my re-read of A Game of Thrones, although it’s occasionally hard, feeling as it does like I’m watching a train wreck about to happen. I suppose it’s only made worse by the fact that there’s no real indication that things will get better until at least the fifth book.

Had more of the wheat bread for lunch, which was tasty. I’ve been drinking a fair bit of tea on this trip since there hasn’t been much in the way of coffee. There were a few beans left from some previous inhabitants (apparently from Alaska?) which I used to make some coffee one of the first days, but it hasn’t been possible to get any decent coffee on the island. David got some hazelnut flavored stuff, but my feelings on flavored coffee being what they are, and the only other coffee being some Maxwell House, my desire to partake of it has been rather limited. I’ve been having both hot tea and iced tea, the latter of which is quite refreshing, and since all it takes to make it is making a cup of tea and pouring it into a big glass with ice in it, it’s been rather nice. Earl Grey makes for rather odd iced tea, perhaps, but still quite tasty.

Beth and I just went for a walk along the beach. It was interesting to see what the rain had done to the sand and how different the textures were in different places, depending on what wound up below the water level during high tide and also how much water it got in it. Some places were very spongy, and if you jump there, you can sink in quite a ways. Further up where the water never reaches the surface is very rough from the rain. It also seems like the rain, if it’s heavy enough, stirs up the sand enough that the larger bits come to the surface. There are some very interesting phenomena in general that occur with the interaction between the sand and the water in how the different grain sizes get separated and piled up, both on land and under the water. Clearly there’s a lot of physics that could be studied there, although my guess is that it’s probably too difficult to model. I feel that if I were to study such things, I really should get to spend a lot of time on tropical beaches examining the sand and stuff. I wonder how one includes that in a grant proposal. In any case, I’m not sure how I would go about such a big shift in field, or whether there’s much of that stuff to be done around DC. I guess I will have to start thinking about post-graduation jobs sometime soon.

We’re off to Tippy’s again tonight for dinner, leaving shortly. I’m not quite sure what I’ll have this time, but I suspect that a margarita is in order, at least.

Thursday 3/23:

Beth and I got up just a little after six and saw the sunrise. Well, it was rather hazy and so the sunrise was a bit diminished in its glory, but we did see it when it emerged from the clouds above the horizon, and it was very picturesque. We also ate the remaining cinnamon buns from the other day, being the self-sacrificing souls that we are. Then we went back to bed and I slept until nine; I guess I was tired out after all the swimming the day before.

I decided to go on a more exploratory swim in the morning, vaguely thinking of going all the way out to one of the little islands a little ways off the coast. I found some extremely exciting reefs and saw a couple of trunkfish, which are very cute and amusing. One of them was actually an Orange filefish, which look similar to trunkfish; the other was an ordinary Spotted trunkfish. Also saw a lot of other types of fish, some big rainbow parrotfish and some stoplight ones, lots of blue tangs, blue angelfish, ocean surgeons, the queen triggerfish, and I saw another sea turtle! I decided to follow this one around a bit to see what he would get up to. I managed to be right on top of him, drifting along, when he apparently decided that he’d had enough of me following him and shot off like a dart. It was quite a change from his previous sedate pace, I have to say. I also saw some truly stunning corals, elk horn or stag horn (maybe?) ones the size of me. Really really spectacular. I wish there were a book here on the different coral types. I’m going to have to look into that when I get back so I can understand a bit better what all I saw here. I kept sort of going out “one more reef” because they were so pretty and there were so many fish. I had just passed over the top of one reef and was looking around when I saw this shape come swimming into the little clearing between this reef and the next. I thought “That looks like a shark”, and as it got closer, I saw that it was indeed a shark! It was probably only about four or five feet long, but still very menacing. It even had one or two commensals (meaning eating at the same table) fish that followed it around, although I didn’t really stick around for long enough to see what kind of fish they were. Discretion being the better part of valor, I decided to head back to shore, anxiously looking over my shoulder the whole way. It followed me up to the top of that reef, but didn’t come any further than that, which I was rather grateful for. When I got back onto shore, I told Beth (who had come down to the beach with me and splashed around in the water a bit). She was very relieved that I still had all my limbs intact, a sentiment which was shared by everyone when they heard about it. I told David that we had to change the plan of swimming out to the little island to instead involve not doing so. He heartily agreed. Sharks are really menacing and imposing. I think it’s something to do with knowing that they haven’t had to evolve at all for several hundred million years; they’re that good at eating things in the ocean that they haven’t had to change. Upon comparison with the types in the book, I think it was a Blacktip shark, or possibly a Sand tiger. I kind of wish I hadn’t seen it, since I’m now quite sure we’re not going to go out to that island, even though the shark problem isn’t really any danger.

I decided that staying out of the water seemed like a good plan for the rest of the day, and had lunch featuring the exciting wheat bread from Muriel’s bakery. Peggy and Mary had gone there in the morning and found that she had a couple of loaves left over from yesterday, so they brought them home. Very tasty, if perhaps not as exceptional as one could have hoped. I think that coming from Denmark has given me extremely high standards for bread, basically. After lunch I finished my Japanese murder mystery. I hadn’t realized how fully developed the infrastructure was in Japan in the 12th century. I may have to read up on that at some point (in my copious spare time, of course). Also worked on a new puzzle with Peggy and Beth. This one is 1500 pieces rather than 1000, but the pieces are bigger and it should be easier. It’s the first puzzle I’ve done that didn’t have the pieces really lock together when they were attached. I guess I’ve just had the good fortune to be raised among really good jigsaw puzzles. (Watch Best in Show in order to understand that last sentence)

In the afternoon I decided to renege on my previous statement that I wasn’t going to go back out swimming today. I stayed close in, though, and mainly explored various reefs south of where we come down to the beach, whereas the little island is to the north. Didn’t see anything too exciting, although I continued the investigation into the identity of some small striped black and white little fish. We haven’t been able to find them in the book, and suspect they’re an immature version of some other fish. But we don’t really know which. I spent some time trying to find large specimens and try to see if I could find some transitional ones to see if we could discover what kind of fish they are. Nothing conclusive so far. I also saw an enormous rainbow parrotfish. I would guess that it was somewhere between two and three feet long, probably closer to three. I think I’m generally being conservative in my estimates because of not wanting to seem overly alarmist, I guess, especially when it comes to things like the shark. But it is kind of hard to properly estimate sizes out there. The water magnifies things oddly and unless you’re right on top of something, it’s pretty hard to tell how big it is. I’ve been using the size of the stingray from yesterday as a benchmark, since that was about four feet long including its tail, and in that case I was close enough to really be able to see. I also saw a lot of other types of parrotfish, including stoplight ones (in their brown and red phase as opposed to their brightly colored one), striped ones and possibly princess ones. It’s a little hard to tell the difference between them all without the book to consult. The Rainbow parrotfish has bright blue lips, that are very distinctive, and the Stoplight parrotfish (in its colored phase) has a very brightly colored tail which is yellow and red and blue and green. Parrotfish apparently also change sex sometimes, like the wrasses.

For dinner we went back to Mate & Jenny’s, in Palmetto Point. They didn’t have any crawfish or grouper, although they did have cracked conch, which Beth and Peggy and Margaret all had. I had steak, having felt sort of in the mood for red meat. Quite tasty, grilled with a barbecue rub of some sort. They weren’t able to make me a margarita or even a rum punch with tequila substituted for the rum, so I had a Kalik. Ended up having a tequila on the rocks afterwards, which was also rather tasty.
Now we’re back home, sitting around reading. It seems weird that it’s only nine, since it feels more like midnight. I’m not sure how long I’ll last before I go to bed. Tomorrow is the last full day here. The week has sort of flown by, although I can’t say that life here has really moved at a breakneck speed. It’s been a really nice vacation; I’m beginning to see why people like to come to tropical beach paradises.

Wednesday 3/22:

Got up around 7:30 this morning and had one of the cinnamon rolls we got the yesterday at Muriel’s Bakery. They were quite tasty, with raisins in them and a sort of citrus icing. Then headed off to another beach with David in search of coral that wouldn’t be as sandy. We thought that maybe down by the cliffs further south the coral would be cleaner and the water less murky. However, this turned out to not be the case. We still had a very nice hour-long snorkel though, and I saw many exciting fish, including a Spotted trunkfish (which are amusing and cute because of their triangular shape) and some immature yellowtail damselfish. These are blue with almost electric blue dots. Very striking. The more grownup form has a yellow tail and proportionately fewer dots, but still quite beautiful. Also saw many sergeant majors (another type of damsel fish) and more banded butterflyfish. And I saw a turtle, which was very exciting. It was extremely graceful, just sort of sailing along through the water. I was a little apprehensive about disturbing it too much, so I didn’t follow it but just kind of watched it go for a while. I also saw a a number of schools of grunts. They seem to be composed of a number of different species, so that there were a lot of smallmouth grunts mixed in with some French grunts and possibly bluestripe grunts. Some of them are sort of blue with yellow stripes and others are the inverse, so they look very pretty near each other. I also found a number of little fish that are blue and yellow, with the top half being a dark purplish blue and the bottom being a golden yellow. These are immature Spanish hogfish, which are another kind of wrasse. Sort of the inverse of them is the Yellowhead wrasse, which is similarly two-toned, but with reversed colors. Also the blue isn’t as much of an indigo color being more like a cerulean or some such thing.
Here are some pictures of various fishes I saw:
A French grunt:

I didn’t see this many of them together, but here are some schooling smallmouth grunts:

A spotted trunkfish:

I had a fairly lazy next couple of hours but did eventually go for another swim in the afternoon. Saw a lot more of the blue-headed wrasses, banded butterflyfish, queen damselfish, as well as quite large parrotfish, mainly rainbow ones and some stoplight ones, I think. Also saw the queen triggerfish again and some big ocean triggerfish. I also saw another barracuda, although this one was smaller and by itself. It was sort of skittish, though. Another stingray was on the bottom out where it was about twenty feet deep or so, minding its own business and didn’t seem to want to move anywhere. However, when I got back to land, Peggy told me that she and Beth had seen a stingray come in very close to shore and that it was probably still around. I followed the direction it had gone, and sure enough, found it in water that was maybe two feet deep. It had a bunch of fish following it around and it was just sort of moseying along. I felt a little odd lying down on the sand, more or less, in order to be under the water and able to see it, but it was quite something. It had spines along its back in addition to its stinger on its tail. All in all it was maybe three our four feet long. Then I sat and read for a while on the beach, feeling somewhat worn out from two hour long swims in one day. A very hectic life I lead here, certainly. We ended up finishing the puzzle in the afternoon; there were only three missing pieces.

For dinner we went to a restaurant that had been recommended to us by the people who were staying at Brighton Hill the week before us. They stopped by to look for some shoes that they might have left the day after we arrived and mentioned this place. However, it’s very hard to find anything here on the island without directions, especially since street signs seem to be rather lacking. David and Mary had gone out in the afternoon and found the place, though (it’s up near Governor’s Harbour) and made reservations for 6:30. So off we went, stopping briefly to see where the old Club Med had been (apparently it was damaged in a hurricane and closed). Along the way we saw a stunning sunset over the Caribbean. The restaurant, called Tippy’s, was extremely good. I had a margarita, which wasn’t as strong as the one we’d had at the last place, so I ended up having two. Beth and Mary split some conch fritters as an appetizer (I tried one, which was very tasty) and then almost all of us had lobster tail, which had been caught fresh that day. Very very very tasty. And for dessert Beth and I split mango and pineapple crepes a la mode. Extremely yummy. Mary, in a shocking change from her normal preference, had a brownie cake. The question was raised as to how many drinks it would take before Peggy would play the piano, or before Margaret would start dancing. She said “You can fill me up, but you’ll have to carry me out”.

After getting back from the restaurant, I finished reading Sherlock Holmes and started on another mystery novel that I found here, this one set in ancient Japan. Seems rather interesting so far.