Sunday, June 18, 2006

Los Cinco MUERTES!!!

Nic and I have been quoting the title of the blog (Los Cinco MUERTES!!!) to each other for the past several days.... it's from Jurassic Park II. For those who no hablo espanol, it means '' the five DEATHS''!!!

We visited one of the Five Deaths the other day. Sorta. Isla de la Plata... the poor man's Galapogos. We are, in fact, poor men, so we opted to visit Isla de la Plata for $30 instead of the Galapogos for around $1,000.

The boat ride there was supposed to include whale and/or dolphin viewing. It did not. I don't believe they actually exist. Whales, I mean. Does anyone actually ever see them on these whale-viewing trips? I mean have you, specifically, seen them? Not some friend of a cousin's coworker? I think not. ''Whales,'' it seems, are just a clever marketing scheme created to sell more boat trips.

The island itself was pretty cool. There were lots of birds, and they weren't afraid of us big human beings walking by a few feet away from them. It was easy to see how the dodos got clubbed to extintion by sailors visiting the Galapagos.



A couple of blue-footed boobies. Really, that's their real name.

Nic, duly impressed with all the boobies.
Besides the hundreds of boobies, the island had frigate birds, pelicans, sea lions (this, too, we had to take on faith alone... suspicious...) and some great snorkeling. Snorkeling that was leaps and bounds better than our previous attempt. Snorkeling that consisted of us swimming with (and actually being able to see) colorful fish. This was followed by another boat ride completely devoid of sightings of any mammals other than our fellow homo sapeins. (Marketing scheme!! Marketing scheme!)

1 comment:

Kia said...

I have, in fact, seen a whale on a whale-viewing boat ride. So much for that conspiracy theory. :-P Maybe they don't exist in the southern hemisphere though...

I'm glad you guys are having fun adventures! Say hi to Nic for me!