Grand Cayman Day 2

Today began with a dawn bird walk and ended up with Wren throwing up and us cashless.  Still, it was an excellent day:

Good morning on Grand Cayman!

Birds

I woke early and went on a short birding walk down the lane.  It was 7am (4am Seattle time).  Walking down the lane of mansions and shacks, bouganvilleas tumbled over fences, palm trees stretched overhead and jacaranda pods hung low.  I passed dog walking locals in flip-flops and Cayman house-cleaners leaving vacation homes with buckets and brooms.  High in the trees iguanas sunned themselves while honey-eaters hovered over acacia blossoms and small birds walked palm leaves looking for insects.

There are so many warblers that I failed to conclusively ID even one.  Everything warbles.  They fly in flocks of tweeting rushing things.

Despite my warbler challenges, I saw 7 lifers.  The identified bird list for today (for my Mum):

White crowed pigeon

White winged dove

Common ground dove

Bananaquit

Greater Antillian Grackle caymanensis 

Northern mockingbird

Smooth billed ani

Green Heron

Cattle egret

Belted kingfisher

Snorkeling

Frost and I swam out to the coral bommie off Cemetery Beach while Wren jumped waves.  At first, Frost battled with keeping the fins in the water instead of splashing on the surface.  He said "my body just floats up out of the water with these fins on.  My feet just float!"  After some practice and adjustment he became comfortable and we snorkeled around for almost an hour.  At one point a couple on lilos threw fish food into the water and Frost almost swam into a group of large silver fish which clustered around him.

Wave jumping.  Really, there were waves.

See, a wave!  Round pieces of coral roll up and down in the wash
and litter the beach.

I could barely use my iPhone until this afternoon when I realized I could
turn the brightness way up.  Until then I was screen-blind and just pointed my
camera in the general direction.  This is how many things look to me still.  Its very bright!

Walking home after the beach.  Our house is behind the turquoise roof-thing.

We saw many fish but didn't reach the full range of coral of the barrier reef.  I am glad with did not continue swim out further as it was harder to return against the wind and withdrawing tide.  The water was slightly cloudy, probably due to wave action.  A number of people have mentioned that they are having higher-than usual waves for this area.  Today, the swells were 3-5 feet while many days the seas in the area are calm.  Frost and Wren enjoyed the waves but they had stirred up the sandy bottom which made it harder to see.  

Tomorrow Frost and I are going out on a snorkeling boat to the stingray sandbar and to a few other snorkeling sights.  Wren & Josh were going to come but Wren had a sore and upset tummy tonight and threw up once.  He also has a low fever.  I hope he feels better tomorrow, but is having a quiet day at home with Josh.

Josh is not terribly keen on snorkeling and is being very sweet saying he is going to have 'man time' with Wren.  Those who know me know that I love snorkeling from the beach but am not a big fan of boats on open ocean.  I really dislike big swells.  The wave height tomorrow is supposed to be 2-4 feet so that sounds okay.  

The Lizards of Conch Point

This afternoon we explored West Bay and the Barkers Point area where we stopped and watched kite surfers skimming over the mud-flats.  The road to the natural area is called Conch Point Road. At the point there are drifts of huge conch shells swept into the mangrove roots by the tide.  Some had crabs inside but most were just filled with sand.  I collected a few - pretty ones sell for $25 in town.

Drifts of Conch Shells at the point

Along the road we stopped to watch a large green iguana with a yellow and black striped tail.  As we drove closer for a picture it scuttled into the mangroves and startled a green heron which had been sitting, unseen, less than 6 feet from us.  The heron let out a great cackling shout at the iguana until it noticed me peering with my binoculars.  Here is today's best lizard picture.  We also stopped for lizards crossing the road, saw them in trees, stepped over them etc.  I am looking out for a book called "Reptiles of Grand Cayman."

Cashless

Before we left, Josh and I both drew a small sum in cash and expected to use our BECU atm cards once we arrived.  Both of us tried to get money and received mysterious messages from the atm.  We googled and learned that the US Credit Union system has no participating banks in the Caymans.  Uh oh.  We can get a cash advance on the credit card by walking into a bank and proving our identity and paying $25 but then we may as well open a Cayman bank account, right.  And we can still buy rum.  And Lynn - yes, flights are around $600 or less... but hurricane season starts in May.  Its also some of the calmest driest weather.

This is the rum, on our deck.  It is 65% over-proof Jamaican rum.
It was tasty.

Grand Cayman Day 1

This evening, returning from the beach, I told Josh that we should make a booking now for next January so we can come to the same place again next year.  I know it is only the first day, but I have seen enough to know I want to do this A LOT MORE.

We arrived, red-eyed and grumpy after about 12 hours of very turbulent, squashed, no-frills, low-sleep flights.  On approach, we circled the island a few times, swooping over cruise ships looming far higher than the island and across uninhabited atolls with yachts moored nearby.  The sea changed from a moody turpentine to pure turquoise.  On arrival, there are no concourses in the airport, so we just walked off the plane onto the blazing white cement runway and 85 degree heat.  The kids were thrilled.

Frost said "This is great.  This is tropical."
Wren said "I thought it would be MORE tropical.  It is very hot.  There are palm trees!"

Our house is lovely.  It is one half of a duplex on the beach or rather on a tiny rocky shelf with a tiny beach which connects right onto the end of the famous 7 mile beach.  We are a short walk from one of the best beach-snorkeling sights in the area (Marine Park's Cemetary Reef) and around the corner from a supermarket and a liquor store featuring gazillions of types of rum.

Everyone is very helpful and laid back.  Josh went to one of the U21 World Cup soccer games and reported that they couldn't figure out how much to charge or how to issue tickets so they told everyone to just come in.  The supermarket shopping aisles are chaos as people just leave carts at odd angles and drive hither and thither up and down the aisles.  It is not uncommon to have an 8 cart grid-lock.  Nobody minds.  Everyone just stands still and looks confused.  I came to the front of a 7 cart line at the checkout and asked where eggs were.  She told me where and added "If you need eggs, go and get them... there's a long line so they can wait."  How does that work?

We have started our bird list, or rather tried to.  I thought I had identified a kind of dove, a black cuckoo and a shrike.  However, going through the bird book I missed vital diagnostic features and am only able to conclusively identify a wild rooster which was begging by the Car Rental place.

On the road from the airport we saw some large lizards (18" to 2 feet long) dead on the road.  I mentioned this to the owner and she said that they were invasive South American iguanas and they are told to run them over!  These are not the rarer, native giant blue iguana which we hope to see later in the week.  When we first came to our house, the kids screamed to me to come and see A LIZARD. Indeed, the rocks by the shore are home to many larger hunting lizards - the kind that stand up tall and run fast and upright.  We will stalk them again tomorrow.

While Josh watched the Seahawks game I took the kids down the beach (in the picture) to a nearby swimming beach and marine park.  We snorkeled and Wren built castles and jumped waves.  We stayed until sunset it was so lovely.  I saw many fish, including tang, silver fish and something that looked like a hawk fish. I also found a complete lobster carapace which I hope to draw tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning I am going bird watching and then we'll try and snorkel out to the reef with Frost and wade and baby snorkel with Wren.  There is a kayak under the deck we can take out and moor to a buoy if Wren gets comfortable enough to snorkel himself.  Right now he only wants to jump waves.  The sea is VERY salty and warm.  The visibility is good but I have not yet seen the coral.  Tomorrow, I hope.

Our house is the left half of this duplex.  This is taken from the beach wall.

This is the view from the deck over the rocky foreshore.
Plain sand starts around that corner.  In the distance you can see some white silhouettes which
are huge cruise ships in port.

Newark 3am

After I have walked concourse C failing to find a coffeeshop, Josh tells me that Dunkin Donuts is the Starbucks of the east coast.   Urbanspoon says there is a  Starbucks here but my up-all-night eyes cannot see it.  

The kids are asleep.  

There were drifts of dirty snow along the railroad tacks and the wide glass windows are radiating cold.  Frost brought no coat so Josh is in a t-shirt  while fist has the sounders jersey.  Frost said he thought it was going to be hot. 

We are going to wake the kids shortly to get a bite to eat before boarding.  

Heritage Kitchen

For lunch, I ate coconut grouper at the Heritage Kitchen beach shack which sells local reef fish caribbean style. I had been waiting to visit for a few days but they are only open Wednesday through Sunday and close early (6pm) on Sunday so I had missed a few opportunities. After serving my fish and Wren's soda, the chef and her friends sat at another table under the coconut fronded shelter and played a card game while smoking cigarettes. The rain washed over the sea and gave it a smoothed out appearance. In the distance, beyond the lee of the houses and palms on the shore - the water was rippled by wind but we were perfectly protected.

Nosology with a Wolf

Today I visited a doctor of noses and related orifices.  His name is Dr Wolf.  His nursing assistant did my intake, giving me a scratch-and-sniff test to see how acute my smelling was.

The only scent I could smell was mint.

"I can't really smell any of these" I explained to her after scratch-sniffing the little brown patches on the card.   She said I had to guess to score the test.  There was no "don't know" option.  I said that was wrong because then I had a 25% chance of getting one of the listed smells right while the truth was I didn't know at all.

She said "I can smell it from here!"

I had been listening to an NPR program about power poses.  Apparently dominant animals of all species assume open, wide stances which communicate dominance to others as well as to the self. The nurse was in a power pose at her terminal - legs akimbo, shoulders back - so she was used to obedience.  I tried not to cross my legs like a victim but did, involuntarily.  It was partly because I had just washed my hair and left it wet which is an unusual thing to do in winter and made me feel socially awkward.  I felt that everyone was thinking about my hair so I guessed what they smelt like.

I scored 1/3.  I really did smell mint so I was okay with that.

After that the Wolf doctor came in.  He was wearing a Sounders lanyard and looked happy.  Even as a doctor he was very nice, witty, informative and (I hope) thorough.  He spritzed my nose with two unpleasant liquid drugs (novocaine and something else to dilate my nostrils) and then stuck a long thin tube with a light on up my nose.  This told him that I have no nasal polyps or inflammation in the nasal passages.

The nose squirters

 He asked if I had had major head trauma or surgery, which I have not.

His conclusion was that I have either post-viral or idiopathic anosmia.  Idiopathic is a good word for "we don't know".  It means "arising spontaneously or from an obscure or unknown cause".  Its origin is actually the Greek words for one's self (idio) and suffering (pathos).  From Wikipedia I learned that the term comes from nosology.   "Nosology!" I thought.  However, nosology has nothing to do with noses... but is the science of classification of diseases.  So, my disease is either post-viral or unique not-yet-understood type of suffering.

The Nose Doctor has referred me for a brain MRI.  I asked him if it was likely that I had a brain tumor.  He said it was not, however in cases of "a disease of one's own kind" anosmia, it is standard protocol to look for a tumor in the part of the cortex where the olfactory nerve enters the brain, or connects to it.  I don't recall the exact mechanism but he showed me a picture and pointed at some nerves.  Here is a picture in case you are diligent about understanding all this.

Parts of the nose (not the one showing the olfactory nerves)

The reason's that I am unlikely to have a brain tumor are:

1. This has been going on a long time;
2. I am not having headaches
3. I don't have blurred vision
4. I am not falling over
5. or Having personality changes (although, he pointed out that I am unlikely to have noticed if I am, and so I am asking YOU, if I am much altered).
6. In his entire career of referring anosmiacs for MRI's he has never found one.

The reason that I might is:

1. I cannot smell anything even though my nose-part receptors look fine so perhaps something is wrong with my brain-part receivers.

I am not able to get an MRI soon because our health insurance is not officially through yet and so the Imaging department won't schedule an expensive procedure like this until they have authorization.  I have given them the COBRA contacts in hope of achieving this but it may have to wait till we return from holiday.

Meanwhile, I was warned to pay attention for smoke and gas leaks.

Mysteries

Today we have faced two mysteries and solved one of them.

Where are the plankton?
The first relates to our plan to sample plankton.  Frost is going to be missing a week of school for our upcoming trip.  Public Schools do not like children to go missing even for tropical island vacations (or perhaps, especially so).  They send you information about how even planned absences by middle-class kids are correlated with lower high-school graduation rates and worse test scores.  Plus, it stresses the teachers.  So, in order to qualify as an excused absence rather than being truant (the really bad kind of absent) they require you to fill out a form to show how you will make the trip EDUCATIONAL.

To answer this question I made up a project to compare zooplankton in a few samples of Puget Sound and Grand Cayman water.  I gave Frost a notebook and explained it to him.

Being a more experience truant than I and also more teenage, he said "Mum, you realize we don't have to  do this.  I can just say "I am going to educate myself by looking at tropical fish or something."

Ignoring objections, today Frost and I sat down to make some fractional mesh sieves to strain water for plankton of  various sizes.  We had been given the nitex mesh by a friend who is a marine biologist.  I followed instructions online and Josh sawed our PVC pipe into the correct lengths.  Frost glued the nitex on with silicone adhesive and they looked great.

The 100 micron sieve.  It has a line on it because our first outline was wrong. 

We drove down to Golden Gardens and I gave Frost some water shoes and told him to wade into the water and full a bucket.

"You never said I had to go in the water.  Its freezing.  You go to be kidding" was his reaction.  To be honest everyone else on the beach was wearing ski jackets and mufflers and clustering around smoky fires.  A few people were running around the beach wearing bicycle helmets with balaclavas under them.  Frost rolled up his pants and waded in the sea.  Wren cried about the wind and the water and the blinding sunshine and the fact that it was taking away his screen time but we persisted.

Frost wading in winter

We strained a few buckets through the fractional sieves and there was a lot of 'fine stuff' in the sieves.  So we took the water and the stuff home.  However, when we looked at our sample under 100X 200X and 400X - there was no plankton just fragments of leaves: tiny, tiny leaves.

200x seaweed fragment from Golden Gardens

We found a few odd things - a leg about 100 microns long that looked like a spider-leg - some small drifting rice-grain yellow things but nothing that looked like plankton.  So, we wonder if we have to strain more water to get enough plankton to see.  We wonder if the plankton is deeper down or further out.   Frost is learning that science is not about finding things out as much as finding more mysteries.

What was the crunching in the night?
Last night, at 3.45am, we were woken by Beezle barking a lot.  He stood up in bed and barked "warning, warning".  I fumbled for the light switch and failed to find it.  Josh tumbled out of bed to fight (or at least face) the source of the noise.

He padded around the house for a bit and then came back to bed saying it was nothing.  But I couldn't sleep again.  I got up and checked all the doors, checked Frost, checked the computers.  Everything was quiet.  Eventually, I slept again but all day we were puzzling about the noise - a repetitive crunching sound that made Josh think of a cat scratching something near his ear and me, of someone dragging their fingers back and forth on an old corrugated washing-board.

The mystery was solved at bedtime when I went to run a bath and found a large bag of Tostitos in it.  Frost said he had been eating them in the bath while hiding from Wren and a friend on a playdate.  Now, our cat 'Kitty Haiku' likes to drink water from the bath.  We have deduced that, in the dark of night, she jumped into the bath and landed ON THE BAG OF TOSTITOS (a jumbo Costco bag).  She was freaked out and tried to jump out, thrashing around on the giant bag of Tostitos.  Beezle started barking and she fled.

This explains the noise and calms me, somewhat.

I am not inserting a reenactment although it would be entertaining.  Josh is eating the thrashed-upon Tostitos as I type.

The Best Recipe Ever (if you are a South African Emigrant Nostalgic baker)

Imagine you emigrated from the USA and ended up in some up-country South African town where people eat boere-wors and Nescafe Instant coffee.  Now you have children.  Instead of the cultured Starbukkers of your youth, they like Milo and anchovy paste on toast.  Your friends let them sip wine and shandies at braais.  What can you do?  Nothing, of course.  But to make yourself feel better you bake choc-chip-cookies and force-feed them pepperoni pizza for parties - imported pepperoni of course.

Well, my expat attempt to emphasize my children's colonial roots is The Crunchy.  If you fly SAA to South Africa, odds are you will get a crunchy with your tea or coffee.  They are served at parties, kept in the cookie tin, sent in lunch boxes and shared (chocolate coated) at Christmas.

Crunchies are the South African choc-chip cookie and now you too can enjoy them!

Here is a great recipe. from Orna Bakes website.  If the link is broken, ask me... I have a copy of a few versions.

I am waiting for my second batch to come out of the oven.  They take a while to harden and the kids keep coming to check "Are they ready yet?  Are they cool?"  Of course, I can't smell anything even this close but they sure look good.

Another good recipe is my aunt's recipe for klapperys (coconut ice).  You American's have no idea what I am talking about... you probably think its some kind of dairy-free desert or a coconut smoothie.  It is not!  It is about 50/50 desiccated coconut and sugar.  I shall post hers later (photostream glitch) but for now you have the web version.

Meanwhile
Wren and I went for a walk together to return books to the Free Little Library.  All around our neighborhood there are little outdoor book boxes where you can take or drop books.  I often read books from them - an odd and seldom curated mix - including When Bears Attack, fantasy novels, romance, scandinavian detective novels and whatnot.

On the way home Wren confided that his friend Piper had told him that her cat puked its intestines out and is now dead.  Did I think that was gross?  I said I thought it was gross.

This is why you must take your kids on walks - to find wild books and learn about gross secrets they have been keeping.

The Blog is Back

Apparently Facebook is not nice for everyone and family, near and far, have been missing out in a big way.  They didn't know that Wren turned 7, they didn't hear about the snow, they didn't know how cute the kids are or that I have lost my sense of smell ... SO... we are going to go back to blogland.

Hello World.

In which we do not get the dinner we planned
The first news to report is that we did not go to the new Seattle Din Tai Fung for dinner because the wait for a table was 1 hour and 45 minutes at 6pm.  Apparently, this is not a family-friendly place to eat as you cannot make a reservation and you cannot put your name on a list until you are standing outside.  Its like that Whale Wins place that is so popular that I have never eaten there.

Because I really care about dumplings, next week, I shall go and take my laptop and put our name on a list and then Josh will join me with the kids for dinner.

Because we were all geared to eat out, we went to Bengal Tiger instead.  Wren whispered "don't tell them but the thing I don't like about this food is that it is all spicy".  He drank two glasses of water and a mango lassi as well as lots of tandoori chicken, vegetable samosa and rice.  Then he was full up.

Frost ate dal.

Josh and I ate as much as we could of the remaining dishes but we have enough for dinner tomorrow in the leftover box.

We all ate sugar coated aniseed on the way out.  I could only taste the sugar since aniseed is mainly a smell.  Today, I also noticed I could not smell cologne, dog poop, Frost, Beezles sour ears or chocolate.

The ENT
On Tuesday I am going to see an ENT.  I went to see the regular doctor this week to follow-up on my anosmia (there, a scrabble word for you).  Last time I had seen her I had impressed her with my profound smell loss by being unable to smell anything in a bottle of dried porcini.

She prescribed 3 months of B12 in case it was due to a deficiency but I have had no improvement and asked to be referred to an ENT.

She called the ENT while I was there.  He said that the most common cause of loss of smell was a viral infection (a cold) or chronic sinus infection.  I cannot recall a particular cold causing this but it has been a long while.  He also suggested I try zinc 'in case'.

I will report back after the appointment.

Cayman Islands... Soon
I have put a laundry basket out in the bedroom and am throwing things in it for our trip to the Cayman Islands.  Today I threw in a $2.99 snorkel and mask which I bought at Goodwill and a $40 pair of fins and mask which I bought on the Sports Authority Sale.  Apparently most people are buying snowboards and skis despite the snow drought.  I have also put a hold on a book at the library titled Birds of the Cayman Islands.  There are many new birds, parrots and a strange kind of forest called Dry Royal Palm Forest in which huge palms poke out of dry deciduous forest.    You can see them in the book preview on Amazon.  I have also ordered a plankton net with 300 micron mesh for the kids to capture larger zooplankton for our microscopic research project.

My Cayman Island To Do List now looks like this.  Of course, this is very tentative and there may be more or less lying around.

Saturday:  Arrive
Sunday:  Explore locally and lie around.  Hunt plankton.
Monday:  Stingray City & Snorkel tour (weather permitting, because there is only one cruise ship in town that day)
Tuesday: Turtle farm and water park.
Wednesday:  Lie around.
Thursday:  Botanic Gardens Iguanas and hike Mastic Trail to find parrots.  Swim NE beach.
Friday:  Lie around & snorkel a new beach
Saturday: Move to hotel and lie around pool.
Sunday: ditto.

That's enough for now.
Bye
Shannon

Adventures in Microscopy

Today, I hooked up the new OMAX Microscope and downloaded the software to record pictures and transfer them to the computer.  Then, I went out and collected a sample of water from our bird bath.

This is what was in it!

Bdelloid Rotifer  90 microns.  100X

It was swimming around, waving its littel cillia around the mouth, sucking  in tiny dots of things.  I read that this animal is a kind of phytoplankton.

It was in my bird bath!

There were a couple of them.  We watched them swimmig, attaching and eating for a while before returning them to the birdbath!

Incredible fun for all.

Wren tastes his first truffle

Wren has been obsessed with truffles for a while.  He has asked for truffles for his birthday, has begged to "go and find truffles" and has asked "when will we GET truffles".  He had not eaten one, his interest was based purely on a child's fascination with things rare, special, expensive, denied.

I told him I could not find truffles because I did not have a truffle dog or pig and that they were too expensive.  This only increased the desire to Have Truffles.

"I know I will like them!" Wren told his friend and his father, "even though I have never had one.  I love all mushrooms!"  "How do you KNOW you'll like them?" asked his hot-dog-and-rice loving friend.  "I WILL" said Wren.

Today, I wanted to lure the kids out of the house to a Farmers' Market and noticed that Foraged and Found  said they have local Black Truffles in stock in November.  I promised Wren that we could get a few truffles at the market.

"How many can I get?" asked Wren.  "Will it be $100?  I want to buy a BOX."
"It will depend on how much they cost..." I explained.  You can definitely get two.

It turned out that local black truffles (which are typically not as intense as the white or european) were $12 an ounce.  We bought 6 for $20.  Wren asked how to eat them and the vendor explained that we should rinse the dusting of earth from the surface and then grate a few finely over fresh cooked pasta with oil/butter.  He suggested a zester.

All the way around the marked Wren was smelling in his bag saying he could smell them.  That they smelled "like mushrooms".  Frost and I could smell nothing.  Frost said "It smells like paper bag".

When we got home Josh became impatient with Wren because he kept saying "TRUFFLE TRUFFLE TRUFFLE".  Its a good word but quickly gets overused.  I decided Wren did not have to wait for dinner since the trufflepation was killing us so I zested a small piece of cleaned truffle onto a dab of butter and let Wren eat it.

Then he wanted a sliver of raw truffle.  We tried that too.

"I knew I would like it."  He announced.  "It tastes delicious, just like FUNGUS"

Honestly, I can't taste anything much - either they were not fully mature and pungent or its my nose challenge.  I shall cook it properly later with some pasta.

At least Wren is satisfied.