Sunday, July 19, 2009

Odds, Ends, and Stingrays

After running around camp for a week of 5 hour sleep nights, I took it easy this weekend. We watched Changeling on Saturday and then went and saw Harry Potter tonight. We enjoyed both films!

I also spent some time uploading some of my pictures from the cruise we took from July 5-12 with the family.

When we were in Grand Cayman, Hal and I decided to take a trip to Stingray City, a sandbar out in the ocean where stingrays naturally congregate (helped along by food from the tourists who now head out there). This trip started with a half-hour boat ride out to the sandbar and culminated with getting up close and personal with some wild stingrays.

Highlights of the trip included Hal getting whipped across the face by a stingray tail, leaving a red welt that made him look like a pirate (unfortunately, it isn't visible in the picture below -- it's on the side that he has turned away from the camera). We also learned that the large stingrays are female and the male stingrays are much smaller. I enjoyed watching the tour guides interact with the stingrays -- there was much love and respect for the stingrays. One guide told us that his favorite stingray was not at the sandbar that day -- her name was "Bubbles" -- and the stingrays seemed so calm and at ease when being held and handled by the tour guides. Our guide told us that he had been stung once and the only way to easy the pain, said the doctor, was to drink it away. It was a very interesting and educational trip!

A random plus to pictures with stingrays is that they cover up all the parts of my body that I don't like to display in a bathing suit. Which is to say, everything but my head!

(I will say that taking the digital camera off the boat and into the open ocean was very scary -- but we managed to get some pictures without getting the camera wet. Don't try that at home, though.)

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1 comment:

Thomas said...

Is the rumor true that Angelina Jolie adopted Harry Potter?