070105
Back home I've got a sailboat in a boatyard and there always seems to be a wasp's nest inside the companionway entrance, year after year. I've been curious about it's construction and have started watching this gal's housebuilding near the sliding door to the deck here.
I got up in the roof the other day and got this look at the courtyard from above. My Triciclo is chained to the window grill in the front wall.
The two boats next to the Triciclo belong to the Hotel owner Lupe, and the dark green Dodge van belongs to a seasonal visiting couple from Wisconsin. They also have a 26'powerboat on a good trailer and would like to sell the whole outfit for $10G's as they are wintering in Hawaii these days.
While on the roof I took another look at that house on the corner that sold for $90G's last winter. 5 br's and a traditional 1 room caretakers cottage out back with a corrugated tar paper roof.
The Central Market has a communal dumpster and trash pickup. Several times a day it becomes a social club for the local vultures
Lovely in flight but not so pretty on the ground.
Now from not so pretty to Gorgeous.
My landlord's son Paul is going to College in Merida and came home over the holidays for his wedding to the aptly named Fabiola.
The ceremony was in the 'big Church' and ended with an elegant exit in this stretched limo.
Should I ever find myself taking the vows I think this would be the get-away car.
This is the 'SmartCar' built by Mercedes-Benz in collaboration with the Swatch wristwatch company and may soon be distributed in the U.S..
Speaking of wives it appears I may have already found one. . . . sort of.
That blue fish I first saw in week 2 has developed a fan club and here is an item from Kari who I met while she was Blue Angel's marine naturalist a year or two ago.
Hi Denis,
Happy New Year! I just got a chance to take a look at the last two weeks
pages... the fish that Albert Huizing identified as a Yellowtail Parrotfish is
actually a related wrasse, a Puddingwife. The giveaway is the shape of the tail
- as he noted, the Yellowtail Parrot is the only one that HAS a yellow tail, but
the parrot's tail has two pointed ends on top and bottom, with the curve inward,
toward the fish's butt. The Yellowtail also has a pale, sometimes translucent
margin to the tail. The wrasses' tail, on the other hand, is straight (no
points) or slightly curved outward, away from the fish like the one in your
picture. On the wrasse, the margin is yellow. You've got a puddingwife there. :-)
On the worm, you're right. It is a Fireworm. A Bearded Fireworm - and you're
right to not touch them!
I am glad to see the trumpet fish in your pictures; when we were there in
October/November I didn't see any of them, and wondered if something had changed
to cause them to leave.
When are you coming home? We're arriving on 1 February - hope to see you there!
Also, would you add this email address to your list? Thanks!
Always great to hear about your adventures! Again, I hope you have a very happy
new year.
kari
* * * * * Thanks Kari * * * * *
Here is another little car that caught my eye. It's a 'BeUp' and licensed here as a motorcycle.
And then the sun came out!
I headed for Villablanca reef and here are some of the sights.
Above is a fairly common fan coral and a Clown Wrasse.
That fan and these green volcano sponges are starting to make a come-back after the total destruction of hurricane Wilma last winter. Most sponges breath in sea water through their exterior surface and exhale through the central openings. They are filter feeders also.
All this growth is quite extraordinary considering the desolation I found at this time last year.
Sometimes it's hard to differentiate between soft coral and sponge. These are mostly varieties of Encrusting Sponge.
I think this next guy looks like a 'Chromis', we'll see how the voting goes. That mouth and eye make it almost look like a cartoon character.
Where is my knife and fork, I want this guy to join me for dinner.
'Grouper'
Here is a section of pier decking that got tumbled and tossed out to sea quite a ways. This school of mixed breeds take a recess.
The trumpet fish enjoys it's camouflage.
In the past I've mentioned the noise that I've had to get used to at the hotel. There is a lot of racket 'down under' as well, if you explore under the boat route.
As mountain climbers are warned to not look down, I try to keep low and not look up.
There is even the occasional visitor.
This is an Grooved Blade Whip coral. . . . .
Not to be confused with the Sea Rod:
This Parrotfish, next, gives me a chance to demonstrate how much editing it takes to show how things look to other fish. When a you wear tinted glasses you soon compensate for the tinting and perceive the scene in it's truer colors. The inset shows the original picture before it's Photoshop massage. I use a dumbed down version called Photoshop 'Elements' and the most powerful tool for correcting the colors is 'Auto Levels' under the 'Enhance' heading. This tool picks out the lightest area in the picture and color corrects it to pure white. It then applies that correction to the entire picture.
The way this Parrotfish feeds is to bite off some coral, chew it up, digest what it can and poop out the sand that's left in their gut. To get a good bite on the coral it has to really thrust down on the 'bite', like this:
Some of you may be getting tired of these fan corals but there is a pal of mine back home who would like me to bring one back for him and I'm afraid these pix are all I can offer.
I think this is called a Cowfish.
Oops!, here is another lovely one, Joe.
=)
The sunlight in the sea provides some unusual lighting situations.
This little guy is a Drum and likes to hang out in shallow caves. I've never seen one eating anything, they just seem to parade back and forth as if their fins were exotic fabrics being displayed for a buyer.
This is a little better shot. I don't like using the flash because of the 'backscatter' you get from the sand and dust floating in the water.
These are some baby basket sponges.
The blue cast is from the water, not in the coral.
I wonder of some surgeon got the idea for breast implants while on a diving vacation many years ago.
This is a French Angelfish
As a parting shot at the end of this dive here is another view from face-on.
While attending a Sunday morning AA meeting on the beach, next day,
a friend found this little guy standing guard on top of a wall. I guess his relief never showed up.
The ants have completely cleaned out the exoskeleton.
What's the password, buddy!
OK, meetings over and I'm off to the Villablanca shallows again.
I no more than get in the water and I see this battery that was drained and cast off as part of a artificial reef. Can you see the spotted thing under it?
'What's for lunch?'
Talk about lunch. . . . I wonder if the dive masters may be feeding some of these fish. This Wrasse couldn't leave my gloves alone and almost tried to get inside my mask with me. Maybe it was just their reflection in the face plate that attracted it.
It's quite amazing how these fan corals have developed since last year. Hurricane Wilma was a brute with 200 mph winds and monstrous seas. The waves were over 20' high when they came ashore at maybe 30 mph so whatever was in their way got broken, tumbled, and washed back into the sea. All that debris scoured everything on the shallows like gigantic sandpaper. There was nothing left but the fish who were hiding out in much deeper water. After the storm the fish came back in to feed on all the biomass left behind as well as the algae that grew in the nutrient rich debris and wreckage like Atlantita reef. Full details in last years journal. I dove this Villablanca area last year and there was nothing like this fan and sponge then.
As you can see by this next shot I'm only about 12 minutes into this dive, I'm down 16' deep, the water temp is 82ºf, and I've got 2750 psi of air left in my tank from the 3K I started out with.
I much prefer shallow diving because of the warm water and great light. If one is looking for unusual and interesting stuff you don't have to go deep, just start looking harder.
For instance:
This is a Queen Angelfish, and what else could it be called.
And just then another French Angelfish passed by.
Surprisingly, it didn't take much color correcting for this Encrusting Sponge. It's really just very Orange.
Whoa !!, Watch out, here is a killer Stingray who wants nothing more than to be left alone. It's skin pigment changes color and pattern to match it's surroundings. It likes to lay flat and stir up the sand which will settle back down on top of it to sort of bury it with only it's eyes and gill openings above ground.
Here is another Moray Eel. They like to thread their way through the passageways if coral heads and wait for an unsuspecting passer-by to join them for lunch.
These Flounder are very well camouflaged, and quite shy.
In their youth they are configured upright like most fish but as they mature they become bottom feeders and their skeleton begins to rotate within their body and their eyes settle on one side of the skull. If 'Normal' is what you get used to, I wonder what it feels like to be a flounder. Note the location of the mouth in relation to the eyes. I usually don't notice them until they begin to flee. Once they've bolted it's damned tough to get near them.
Man, there must have been an Eel convention today, here is yet another:
'Old Blue Eyes'
This is a Burrfish; it's spines come up if alarmed and it may inflate if molested.
I think this is a Surgeonfish
Here are some hard and soft corals, a fan, some sponge and a Sea Anemone.
Here is a nice spread of Brain Coral.
It looks like this Orange Encrusting Sponge is getting a good foothold here.
I can't identify this. . . . Oops! it's a Butterfly, I guess the dive is over and I'm on my way home now.
. . . . . And look at what else I found:
This VW had a foot taken out just ahead of the rear fender and the doors were traded sides to make them open from the front, suicide fashion. the windshield was chopped down maybe 4" and the hardtop (with soft sunroof) was hand made. The owner happened along but 'No hable englees'. He did say it was a '67. Note the 4 pipe exhaust. This is no kit car, just very creative.
The day after looking that short VW over I decided to go visit the VW dealship and found this windowless TDI Eurovan on the lot. I wonder if that shifter arrangement is new? Very racy feel. The sticker price was equivalent to ~$30K usd.
The dealership is out on the airport road and on the way back into town I noticed this outfit at a car wash. (Very Hip!)
. . . . and finally, that night, I noticed this illuminated 'Virgin of Guadalupe' shrine above the door of a dark little bungalow, below a full moon.
The municipal library is closed for two weeks over the holidays so I've been using an AA friend's Internet connection. Here is a sunset shot showing their lovely home in blue with the orange tile roof.
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