Friday, October 2, 2009

Isla de la Plata

Hey, we went ^there^ today. Finally! It seems like one of the things we had actually been talking about since almost the beginning. Um, it was cool! We had some whale friends accompanying us for part of the boat ride--they jumped in the air and slapped the surface with their flippers, and got eerily close at one point.

The island itself is pretty drab; 'plata' means silver, but that refers more to the gray color of most plants and the thick bird poop in some areas than to any metallic sheen. Still very beautiful 'in its own way,' nevertheless.

But it's the birds that everyone wants to see when they're on the island. Blue-footed and red-footed boobies, frigatebirds (with the puffy red pouches) and nazcas, along with some tiny red birds and some albatross that we didn't see. One boobie seemed to be trying to steal some food out of the throat of another boobie as it was trying to swallow it, sort of slow like you would imagine a snake swallowing an egg.

The town we're in is called Puerto López. We're now taking our malaria med, doxycycline.

3 comments:

  1. My friend Samantha Ferber is in Puerto Lopez RIGHT NOW. She is doing an internship at a marine science station. You should find her, and be friends.

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  2. brian, you wrote that just so you could write "boobie" a bunch of times, didn't you?

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