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Published: March 6th 2010
Hello all,
Been a reasonably quiet week this week, been cloudy off and on which good as cooler especially at nights! Also means less feeding of the iguanas, which can take a hour or so and is hot work getting in and out of the cages.
Mind you weekend was quite busy as we tried a new bar called La Pirata by the ferry dock, only 25 lims a beer and were showing Chelsea Man City game, went back there Sunday too to watch USA against Canada for Olypics Ice Hockey Gold, was packed obv with canadians and americans, we supported Canada.lol
Two new arrivals this week, timothy from Watford and Sammi from manchester, picked both up from the ferry mon and tuesday, we took sammy to a few bars even though he was tired but we were thirsty! The woman who was supposed to arrive never did! and Sammi was Palestinian from Manchester not Israeli as we were told!lol
Dave and Anne off next week, all a bit weird as you get used to people and form a "bond" then they leave :o{
Dave and I
Us resting at Iron Bound before transect
Takes an hour and half through forest / jungle to get here then 1.5 hrs transect then back homehad a "leaky week" this week, basically there were lots of leaks around the place some making things slippery eg leak under kitchen sink (none of the pipes were glued and went up hill!) plus wasting water from mains supply / water tank.
We had to go get prices first by walking around town, unfortunately not a B&Q to visit with everything in!
We fixed the sink waste pipe, some new taps, fixed a ball cock to the water tower and two new shut off valves. Dave and Linus braved climbing the water tower (is pretty high and no ladder) Dave was a bit scared! I supervised from below!lol
Next week going to attempt to fix the 4 push bikes we have as they all have shot bearings, brakes dont work, dodgy sprockets and derraliers been tampered with! Probably need to buy bits for em so need to find where from and may "donate" myself to safe hassle!
Yesterday we went on our usual weekly transect to count iguanas, we saw one! Due to the cloudy weather they hide away in their tree holes, the one we saw looked like one of
the juveniles we released last week.
We also spent some time finding the transect numbered trees and painting yellow lines so we can find em easier!
Went we got back and after a 1.5 hour chill in the hammocks we then had to go to the airport beach to collect some sand for putting in the female nesting boxes, 5 of us in the back of a dodgy looking pick up!
We actually drove down the airport runway and on the way back we saw a plane landing, lucky we were not 15 mins later would have been a bit scary!
The airport is basically one building and a tarmac strip!
The nesting boxes are filled with sand and put in with the breeding groups and captured pregnant females ) get them later in March) so they can lay their eggs.
As you can see from the photos of Iron Bound one of their beaches where they lay their eggs there is loads of rubbish washed up from Costa Rica, we are trying to arrange a clean up later in March, otherwise the poor iguanas will be trying to crawl
through all this crap!
We had two Green Iguanas in the storeroom freezer since i have been there, this is the fridge freezer we keep food for iguanas and turtles. They died of natural causes, think they kept them to give to a museum but they still here, quite scary when you first open the freezer!
Helder the station director got Linus to skin it! Not a pretty sight, but some pictures for you! They are going to bury the carcus and leave to rot so they can then recover the skeleton, gross!
Terry still here and following me around, I have sneaked out a couple of times or locked him in so i can go out on my own! He howls when i go! He is a good and generally sits down or lays under tables in restaraunts its just a hassle and worry about him getting run over by the bikes etc as he does not look!
Although now he is officially the station dog, we bought him a collar and some string for a lead (safer for when he comes with us) . We even took him to
the free volunteer vet for a check over.
As you can see he jumped in the hammock with me the other night and we gave him a bath the other day too, I had to stand in the large bucket to get him to come in and sit down!
Oh well have walked down to Annies internet to write this blog then off to Coral Bay, about a 20 min walk to where ther is a jetty with a bar and restaraunt where there are no sand flies and you can go snorkling, however still a bit cloudy but hoping will clear. Still need to sort out my t shirt tan!
Some of the others have gone on a trip into the Wet Savannah, a relatively unexplored part of the island, they have gone on kayaks then will be walking into the savanah, i decided not to as have plenty of time here to go again, wanted to chill as not really had a chilled weekend in the sun yet and they could not decide exactly what to do eg were going to stay there the night!
We also watched a couple
of dvds this week (children of the corn - rubbish and Hard Wired ), pretty cool as we have been using the new education center with projector on big screen, is like having our own cinema!
Oh well off off to the beach now hope you all well
marky larf
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Jade
non-member comment
I thought you were saving the Iguana's not skinning them!
Hi Mark, Glad to hear that your time in Utila is still going well. Our trip home was fine although I easily could have stayed! That beach is a horrible mess! Is it on the North side? Anyways just wanted to say a quick hi, really nice meeting you and I will be checking back to see how the rest of your trip goes! Take care, Jade