Sunday was a lot of fun. We started the day early, with breakfast beginning at 7am. Ick. By 8:20 we were loaded onto the vans for the one hour drive to the park. Once there we split into two groups and went on tours of the park. This is a really cool tree that was at the entrance.
First we headed out to mangrove forests. On the way our guide showed us some really cool nest things in the trees. It turns out they were termite mounds.
After driving for about 5-10 minutes we stopped at a little bus stop type area. There was a wooden path leading off to either side and the guide led us down one way. This was the mangrove forest, where we saw Black, Red, and Buttonwood mangrove trees. I don’t have pics of all the trees, just the Buttonwood, but I do have some of the roots. Mangrove forests are also important nursery habitats for many fish and other animals. Because they live in such salty environments they have to get rid of the salt somehow. Black mangroves excrete it out of their leaves and Red mangroves out of nodules on their roots. Buttonwood mangroves actually don’t need high salinity environments.
Black mangrove roots, used to get oxygen
Black mangrove leaves taste weird
Red mangrove roots
Buttonwood mangrove
Baby fishes
After the mangroves we drove around some more. We got some great views of the island. This is a beautiful place. Puerto Rico is actually 100 miles long, which was bigger than I thought. I was surprised, but I guess I was thinking it was close to Hawaii size, and those islands are tiny. After a while we stopped at a beach fro 10 minutes or so, just to see. While there we saw two green iguanas, one in a tree and one on the ground. The green iguanas are non-native and a pest on the islands. It was pretty funny because the one on the ground ran in front of us, and we all took pictures. Then it moved near some bushes and people got a little closer, taking more pictures. Then all of a sudden it turned around and ran straight at us, then veered off into the trees on the other side of the beach. A few shrieks were let out when it started coming at us. Those things are big. But no harm done.
Every so often he stopped and put his head up like this. Probably some kind of warning.
Brain coral skeleton washed up on the beach
After the beach we once again got into the trolley tour bus thing and headed off to a light house, where we explored for a bit, met up with the other half of the group, and had lunch. for your enjoyment I shall post more pics of the island before talking about snorkeling.
A manatee skeleton inside
The lighthouse
An anemone in an aquarium inside
Sadly, I have no pictures from snorkeling as I do not own an underwater camera. But I shall do my best to tell you about it. We went to this little beach with lots of rocks to snorkel from. The swim out to the reef that rings a lot of the island was intense. It was very long and went over lots of seagrass beds. Sometimes the water got really shallow and you had to almost pull yourself carefully along with your hands because if you kicked your legs you’d wack your knees on coral pieces in the grass. There were big black urchins with white spines too. Finally we made it over the seagrass beds to the reef. It was SO cool! I love corals, and it was great to see them so close. There were brown, yellow, and purple corals all over. Red and black urchins were hiding in the holes and crevices of the reef. Lots of little wrasses, damselfish and other reef fish were there too. I even found a scorpionfish! They are pretty poisonous so we were careful not to touch it but it was so cool to see it chilling out on the coral, just blending in. When I get the pic from Leah I will post it, because she took one since she has an underwater camera.
So we basically swam around for a while until the program director said we had to go. There are 70 people in our group so naturally we left late and got back to the hotel late where we showered really fast, or some didn’t shower at all, before heading off to meet the mentors brought in by ASLOMP.
Stay tuned.
