17:15 After a
plantain breakfast and a couple of phone calls asking if the park is a hotel…
no, this is San Miguel Biological Station, does it sound like a hotel name?
Haha. Maybe it is due to Costa Rican numbers being shorter therefore upping the
frequency of wrong calls.
At around 8 we
had some tourists sent into the park by a hotel reception, then at half-past
the volunteer, the canadian guy and I headed into town. I had a delicious chocolate milkshake then
got on the internet where I caught up on most things.
We arranged to
meet on the beach for midday then went to the supermarket (for lemons =
lemonade!) before getting a taxi back for 1,000 Colones each (cheap, ~US$2)
dodging the heat.
The afternoon
was great, but not too great for "blennies," as I learnt how to
preserve fish, and that is all I am saying there. Lightening the mood of the afternoon was a
much needed snorkel but with a low tide of over +2ft, as opposed to a normal
negative value, it was very different.
The area to leave sandals etc. (the normal entry point) was sub-tidal,
so much so I had to duck-dive for the freshwater data logger, that is normally
close to being exposed, and out in the middle it was so choppy/deep we had to
return. Instead we hung out with an
array of many juvenile fish, some not identified before by me as well as one
massive, fat, Scorpionfish (See below). Plus some
giant Dog Snappers! More photos I hear you ask?
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| Juvenile Banded Butterfly (D.Philpot) |
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| Some Blenny (D.Philpot) |
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| Flying The Flag (D.Philpot) |
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| Peeping Tom (D.Philpot) |
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| A Familiar Snorkel Buddy - Golden Jack Juv. (D.Philpot) |
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| The Fattest Scorpionfish (D.Philpot) |
Some video action of fish feeding and me almost swimming into that Scorpionfish can be seen here and additional fish footage can be seen in Video 108b.
I am relaxing
now, with a lone Coati hanging around, and about to learn more Spanish. At dinner I noticed that Hermit Crabs were
climbing plant stems in what looked like a competition for height and didn’t
make any more sense than being purely comical.
At the lab this guy almost fell down my neck from on top of a door:
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| A Stinky Surprise (D.Philpot) |
And before bed I spotted this guy keeping guard of the toilets:
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| Lodge Guard Racoon (D.Philpot) |