Monday, May 02, 2011
Critters on the Shore
A couple of months ago, we took advantage of an opportunity to swap houses with friends who own a beachside condo on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. Nearly three weeks of perfect weather and unabashed laziness. Not that our "normal" life is all that stress-filled, but we definitely got in touch with our inner sloth.
Other times we'd visited Boca de Iguanas, the wide sandy beach has been perfectly clean. Great for swimming or jogging, less so for shelling. This time, however, for reasons no one could quite explain, the beach was littered with all manner of aquatic corpses. In the course of one week we stumbled across the remains of an old sea turtle, numerous puffer fish, and one of the strangest, most awesomely beautiful creatures I'd ever seen – a yellow-bellied sea snake. [see photo] At the time, we had no idea what it was. But after a little web research, learned that the snake in question is one of the deadliest snakes on earth. And yikes! It had obviously been swimming around in the same surf that we had been the day before.
Most amazing of all, however, were the thousands of jellyfish that washed up on the beaches. One morning you'd come out to find the beach covered with them, as far as you could see. [see photo] After the next high tide, they'd be totally gone. Then two days later, we'd see another glistening batch of them. This pattern continued for our entire stay. Weird.
