Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

From my email outbox:

Hi all–We did the island tour extreme Saturday, including a brisk one mile hike up to a crater lake (El Junco) and a meander through a giant tortoise sanctuary. We saw a bunch of three-week old tortoises, soooo cute. One five-incher managed to tip himself over trying to climb up a stone. I wanted to help put him right side up but of course I’m not allowed to touch him. He soon did it himself.

That was this afternoon. We spent the morning sailing around to some nearby islands–or should I say some nearby rocks–and snorkeling there. Lots of fish, the boobies and frigatebirds won´t go hungry! At Isla Lobos, a bunch of young sea lions came over to play with us. One tickled my foot with his whiskers and another peered into my mask from about an inch away. We´d been told they wouldn’t hurt us, and indeed they didn’t.

Later, after I got out of the water, one moved on from playing around the boat to jumping up onto the back flat part by the engine. I guess my foot must smell better than I knew, because he also wanted to tickle it with his whiskers. Then he hung around until someone shooed him away. Yes, I have photos.

Wish you biologists were here to tell us more about all the plants and birds and animals, and that all of you were here just for the heck of it. Send me email, I miss you!

Love and xxx
Mom

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Swimming with sea lions isn’t like dancing with wolves.

On the human side, you don’t need special zen talents. You do your swimming around and they do theirs, only their side is fast and sleek and splashy. It’s a bit like swimming with big furry powerful toddlers who somehow have learned how to fly around under the water.

Meanwhile, unconcernedly sharing the shallows, a huge brown pelican stood, preening his feathers.

It’s one thing to read in a book that Galapagos animals don’t fear human beings. It’s something different to walk among birds, mammals, and reptiles that hardly spare you a glance as they go about their busy animal business.

Of course, if you get too, too, too close…the magic tranquility shatters. And if the Galapagosian you got too close to is a huge black marine iguana, it will signal discomfort by spurting out salt from the salt glands inside its nose.

Whoosh!

Then it’s the human’s turn to be disconcerted.

Long slow cocktail evening on the Galapagos–but my feet got tired, and the Internet beckoned.

Frank and I shared a beach with two physicists and three playful sea lions this afternoon. As we walked along the San Cristobal harbor, other sea lions yapped and frolicked among the little boats floating at anchor. Because the Galapagos had few pre-people predators, animals here are incredibly tame and friendly. I also played eye-tag with several of Darwin’s  finches, but no blue-footed boobies or frigate birds. At least not yet…

My photos will take some time to upload at the glacial Internet speeds here. While you’re waiting, I recommend Jude’s amazing bumble bee on a soft lambs-ear flower.

Earth bulges at the equator–and shows some sympathy for those of us who do likewise. Apparently a scale is one of the big attractions at the equator display, a few kilometers from Quito–because of the bulge, your weight gets measured as less.

I’m glad of this because last night I discovered locro!

Another way to fight bulges might be a squeeze from “the “boa del publico” at the Quito Vivarium.

In sadder news, Ecuador lots today’s match with Germany–but they still move forward to the next stage of the World Cup. So the people in bright yellow T-shirts who populated the early-morning view from my hotel window are still full of bright hope, and so am I.

Tomorrow at 4 a.m., we leave for the Galapagos!.

Surely it is not* just the thin air at this altitude that inspires enthusiasm! The soccer team of Ecuador has been astounding people at the World Cup with their unexpected success. Frank and I are en route to the Galapagos, a lifelong dream coming true the day after tomorrow. Meanwhile in Quito, our hosts at the University of San Francisco de Quito have created an amazing private university here. Rome may not have been built in a day, but if Cicero and Caesar could see what Santiago, Carlos, and Bruce accomplished in a few months they would bite the corners off their togas with envy.

* Pardon any weird diction because I can not find an apostrophe on this Ecuadorian keyboard!

After midnight last night, I got home from Orange County. Donald Segretti* is not on public view these days–and there’s little to feed anybody’s Watergate nostalgia at the Richard M Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda.

I’d like to write more about the funny web-enabled journey I made there with fellow-NH-blogger Chris Marcum (fix your SQL database, Chris, I want your blog to work again!)

More than the Nixon Museum, I’d have to recommend the Crystal Cove Shake Shack, and hanging out with your fellow-bloggers, wherever you meet them.

I’ll stop there, since we leave for the Galapagos day-after-tomorrow and I haven’t yet (re)packed!

* Orange County is the home of Nixon’s dirty-tricks-meister and Karl Rove’s mentor Donald Segretti. Segretti got jail time and a suspended lawyering license for his role on the dark side of Richard M Nixon’s 1972 campaign. No word on whether or not Segretti is now working for John McCain, as he did in 2000.

Mosquitos ate my anklebone yesterday, as I struggled to repair an ailing pump.

But I shall take a super-villain’s revenge, bwa ha ha ha, recycling old water bottles into this low-tech mosquito-baffling trap.

Thanks for the link, BoingBoing!

I’m over at Expedia trying to book flights this morning, a job made more complex because I’m determined not to fly US Airways again. Or United either, since our “United” flight to Pittsburgh turned out to be flown by a US Airways crew.

In principle, I have sympathy for airline employees, as corporate drones have discovered a new source of profit in milking their salaries, benefits, and work schedules. But, as a frequent passenger, I know that not every airline makes flying unpleasant. Here’s why US Airways is on my blacklist:

• You can’t reserve seats until you get to the airport.
• When the bins near our seat were full of other people’s huge carry-ons, the stewardess was crabby about finding us someplace else to put Frank’s computer, even as she curtly demanded that we move it somewhere for take-off.
• Lonnnggg waits for checked baggage.

Good-bye to the unfriendly skies of US Airways.

Another reason to be glad to be home–the “beauty bush” by my front door just started blooming!

These two clusters of yellow-centered white flowers shed enough fragrance to perfume my kitchen. (Behind them is a tiny tomato plant growing in a pot. Thank you, Whole Foods, for guessing how much I would like this!)

“Beauty bush” has none of the magic of flower names like “witch hazel”, “rhododendron”, or “forsythia.” And yet, quite a few different kinds of plant somehow ended up being called beauty bush–which makes it hard to go to the nursery and pick out another plant with the same wonderful, wonderful perfume.

Google Image suggests that this plant’s real name is Kolkwitzia.

Easy to see why most of us prefer its nickname…

Port Jefferson, NY, is displaced New England fishing village, its white-balconied clapboard houses in perfect tune with their older brothers and sisters across Long Island Sound.

As Frank and I drove down here last Sunday, it was a real pleasure to watch the progress of springtime outside our car windows. In Massachusetts, the gray trees with red leaf-buds gave way to trees gently dusted with the yellow-green color of spring’s very tiniest leaves. Here on Long Island, the leaves are no longer so tiny, but their early pale colors are still very evident.

You’d think all these hotel rooms with no housework or cooking to do would give me lots of time to work on my novel…