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Monday July 4 – If you saw the first photo and you’re still here, welcome. There are more crabs to come. If you hate crabs, why are you still here? You saw what you’re getting yourself into.
I wish I could sleep in, but I still can’t. I think it’s the years of getting up so early for work combined with being in an unfamiliar setting. At the last hotel I slept too hot with that winter duvet in the tropics. Even the aircon couldn’t penetrate it. Here, I have only a sheet and slept a little cold, even with the aircon at a mild setting.
I thought I would be alone at breakfast, but a man was already eating, and another came in before I left. Breakfast options are fewer at this hotel so that is good. My clothes tell me I have been eating too much lately. Perhaps this will help.
After breakfast I decided to see if I could walk the full perimeter of the island. It was low tide, so that helped, but there are just spots where you can’t continue and must go inland a bit. I must saw even I was astonished
at the sheer number of hermit crabs I saw right from the very start of the walk. All you need to be is ever so slightly observant, and then the whole beach starts to move. At first, they see you move and crouch down and it just looks like shells. Give them 30 seconds and all the shells are on the move. It’s impressive and I now have eleven billionty home movies of these cuties.
At a “corner” of this round island, I found a magical place where lots of beautiful shells roll in and hermit crabs come from near and far to look for a new home. I mean, I’m guessing, but still. Hermit crabs don’t make their shells, they find them. When they grow and need a bigger shell, they have to go looking. And I saw a great number of hermit crabs at these shell depots. One was clearly checking out new realty. One was climbing over a snail shell that I knew would be too small. (They’re the only type of shells I consider taking because hermits can’t get in them – too narrow. I even found a beautiful spiral shell but left it because
someone’s going to live in it one day.) When I looked closer, this shell was the most perfect, most beautiful one of these snail shells I’d ever found. I was definitely keeping it. Until I realized it was still occupied by its original resident! Such bad luck for me, good luck for the snail. I put it back in the water, but I don’t know if its time was up. Later watching a video of this hermit and snail back at the hotel, I noticed the hermit was not searching for a home but possibly trying to eat the snail??
At the same “corner” I also found some weird insect-looking crustacean-like invertebrates all over the rocks that would scurry when they saw me. There were also new crabs (for this trip) who occupy space on the rocks that jut into the water, waves crashing down upon them. They remind me of the crabs in Seychelles, but probably everywhere else there are rocks in the ocean. These crabs seem to be eating every time I look. None of the others ever are.
After the walk, I came back to my room and hung out a bit. Ate some ramen
noodles and then headed for the beach. As feared, there are a lot more people here and all the beach chairs were taken. I found a semi-private space under some trees, but then mosquitos were a problem. I sprayed up and it helped, but it wasn’t perfect. I read for a while and then swam for a while, but it was high tide and sometimes the waves were a bit much. Eventually I moved my things onto the beach, as it was mostly cloudy and I wasn’t too concerned about burning, but in a really wide part of the beach since the waves came up and covered most of it at times. It’s a fine balance. It started to drizzle and I packed up and headed back to the hotel. My intention was to change shoes and go for a walk when it finished raining, but I dawdled and made tea. Somehow it was then 6pm and I had to scoot so I could walk a bit before it got dark.
I headed back to the bat feeding grounds and they were there. The best was a bat I saw flying with her pup. I saw her land and
tried to get a photo, but the light was low, and the photo is not so good. I included it anyway, but it is more hopeful than revelatory. I also saw several land snails in a planter and they were so big! So cool!
Next stop: dinner. I had a green salad and butter chicken. Pretty good. Tonight’s dessert was a cake type of thing that tasted pretty good. I prefer this to the orange slices from last night. In other news, power ballads have made it to this hotel as well.
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