Birds & Bees, and Flowers & Trees

 This is an opportunity for me to share with you some of my favorite images from my trip so far, that are not related to turtles.  I have had the pleasure of spending a lot of time on the beaches here in Tecolutla, and I have especially enjoyed the more remote parts of the beach.  Here you get a better snapshot of nature left to her own devices.  Here are some of her devices.

Birds

Some of my favorite photos have been the number of birds of prey that I have seen here.    In fact, all of these birds were seen on the same day, in a matter of a few hours.    I cannot identify the first one, but the second is a Peregrin Falcon, the third a vulture (there are loads here), and the fourth and fifth are two black eagles.  We have come upon a few of them already enjoying their lunch, but mostly we encounter them in search of it.

Ok, so he's not a bird of prey, but he's gorgeous, isn't he?  This is Pepe.  He travels everywhere with his owner, Alejandro.  He spends most of his time hanging out on his bike handlebars as Alejandro recruits tourists to go on one of his boat tours.

Bees

Yes, I know.  This is not a bee.  It's a wasp, and a pretty cool one at that.  She happened to catch my eye buzzing around the sand, so I watched her for about 40 minutes, snapping shots all the while.  Based on what I witnessed, and asking questions of Fernando, it seems this little lady is pretty crafty.  She's laying her eggs in the sand.  First she finds a good spot, hovering over it closer and closer so that the wind from her wings blows away any debris.  Then, once she clears the area, she begins to dig.  She digs quickly, until she has a deep little tunnel.  What comes next, I ddin't see myself, but according to Fernando, she kills a mosquito, and then lays her eggs inside it, putting it under ground.  Then, as quickly as it all began, she fills the hole back in and covers it up so that you would never know that she had been there.  Pretty incredible.

Flowers

These are some of the naturally growing flowers that I have seen here.  A lot of people have beautiful blooms in their yards, but I prefer these simply because they are here of thier own accord.  These first blooms are from a cactus, clearly, that lines the border of the beach.  It's essentially natural fencing, which, I would imagine, is also helping to hold the sand dunes in place.

This pretty little lady is all over the dunes to.  She stretches out long tendrils, vines that I hve seen up to 20 feet long, with these beautiful ovulate leaves.

 I just happened upon this little beauty.  No story.  Just pretty.

Trees

Lastly, trees.  Oh, the poor trees of the gulf.  This area was once covered with palms...  thousands of them, but as you can see here, many areas are nothing more than graveyards.  One of their major storms a few years ago brought a virus that attacked the palms, essentially turning them to sawdust on the inside so that the whole top snaps off, leaving a hollow trunk.  Though it's incredibly sad, since it taks many years to grow that tall again, it's actually rather beautiful, in an eery way.

The positive note is that, though many did, not all of the coco palms were lost.  I have twice had the pleasure of watching my friend Noe collect cocos.  Cruising through what was once a rich palm forrest, we look for healthy palms with a good number of cocos.  Using just 2 simple rope loops and a machete, he raises one loop after the other, swiftly reaching the top of the palm and sending one coco after another down.  When collecting an ever larger hoard, he even uses a system of ropes to lower down bunches of cocos.  Having done none of the work, I felt guiltyt reaping the benefits, but man was that the best coco I have ever had.

Ok, and for any of you that are reading this and know me personally....  you know this was inevitable.  Noe made climbing the palm look so easy that I just had to try it.  I learned a lot that day, but what I will probably remember the most is that it is not as easy as it looks!!!!   Between the pain in my feet, my body's tendency to rotate around the tree, the abrasions on my hands, and just laughing hysterically, this was literally as high as I could go!  I swear it felt a lot higher when I was up there!  Kudos to Noe, who I have seen climb nearly 10 palms in one afternoon--a solid 3 hours of intense exercise.

 

So I hope you enjoyed this random hodgepodge of moments in my time here.  It is very sad knowing that my time here is coming to an end and that I will need to move on, but I have a lot of great memories, and wonderful photos to capture the experience.