January 16, 2007 – Santa Rosa

Yesterday we drove to Santa Rosa National Park and then walked the 12 km (about 6 miles) into the campground. It was a long walk on a rough road – mostly downhill, lots of pits in the road, uneven terrain. I’m not the world’s fastest hiker by any means, and I don’t particularly enjoy it, so I was very happy to reach the campground. It’s really pretty here. Our tents are set up in a little grove about a two minute walk from the beach. It’s nice and shady in here, and the place is crawling with little tiny lizards that blend in perfectly with the sand when they hold still, and the larger ctenosaurs like we saw at Palo Verde. One of them is particularly territorial, and he’s constantly bobbing his head at us. There are also magnificent white-throated magpie jays. They look sort of like blue jays because they are bright blue in color, but they are much larger, with very long tail feathers and a black crest on their heads. I love them. There are many other birds around, but I don’t know all their names.

At night, these small black and orange herbivorous crabs come out and scuttle around. It’s a little unnerving to come across one on your way to the bathroom (a disgusting outhouse about a five minute walk from where we are – yuck). Later that night we went out on the beach in the dark (only starlight) to look for sea turtles. And we found one - an Olive Ridley turtle laying eggs in a pit in the sand. We watched her lay the eggs, cover the nest with sand, and then trek back to the water and swim away. Beautiful.

The beach here is lovely. The water is a beautiful blue and the sand is soft and stretches far in either direction. The water is a very comfortable temperature and the waves are amazing (they make Good Harbor’s look like nothing). I love it here. We watched the sunset from the beach, also very lovely. This makes me very excited for Little Cayman.