from parking ticket to Gilgamesh....

 Yesterday we went into town to meet Helen who owns Island Real Estate in Isabel, she's a friend of ours. We love talking with her, there's no pretense, she's genuine and honest. I would love to be able to spend a lot of time learning from her.  We were there about an hour and in that time we managed to get ourselves a parking ticket. We didn't noticed the ticket until we left La Plata later that day. $75 was the penalty. Here's where we parked and unless you like giving money away I wouldn't park there:

 

 

I didn't noticed any no-parking signs but they must have been there. No big deal, chalk it up  to learning more about the island. We didn't end up getting to La Plata until nearly noon. I was telling Andre that the cabana gestapo on the refuge have actually done me a favor.  Not having to hurry to get to my cabana before someone else does has given Lorrie and I the luxury of arriving on the beach whenever we choose. Our cabana is portable and I've made some improvements to it. We had it up on La Plata for nearly 4 hours yesterday and there were strong winds. Anytime I saw one of the poles begin to lean a little I would just move the pillow case holding it. Worked out great. We think we're going to get some paint or markers and color it. Maybe make some sort of protest statement, in an Orwellian flavor. I have a picture of it from yesterday:

 

Lorrie timed me and it took less than 10 minutes to set up. I had paced off the distance for the poles the day before and it is an 8' square. I took small rocks and ties to the corners of the sheet, making a loop for the bungee cords. I noticed yesterday that the sheet needed more give to keep it from working the poles loose in the sand. This also helped to keep the sheet tighter in the wind.

While I was re-working the cabana design I noticed the butterflies darting around me. They looked a lot like the Great Spangled Fritillaries that we have back home. My next mission, after the cabana, was to try and get a photo of one so I could check to see if they are indeed fritillaries. Here's the photo I got:

 

 Here's what I found when we got back to the house. The Gulf Fritillary or Passion Butterfly, Agraulis vanillae, is a striking, bright orange butterfly of the family Nymphalidae, subfamily Heliconiinae. These were formerly classified in a separate family, the Heliconiidae or longwing butterflies, and like other longwings this species does have long, rather narrow wings in comparison with other butterflies. It is not closely related to the true fritillaries.

 

Follow the link if you want to know more about Gulf Fritillary

 

The water is much cooler than in November. As a matter of fact, we've yet to really get into the water other than mid thigh depth. We did walk over the rock art gallery and balance a few pieces.  Oh, which reminds me. The gestapo on the refuge have been telling people that the rock gallery area is restricted and you can't go over there. Well I spoke with Helen and Jorge about this and that is not exactly the case. You can go over there, you just have to stay at the high tide mark, which is the case all over the refuge. There was even a story Helen told us about Captain Bill bringing a lawsuit against the F& W because they were not allowing him to moor his boat off of one of the restricted areas on his tours and just like Jorge, he would tell his customers that they couldn't go any further up the beach than the high tide line. He won the suit.

 

We had made plans to go over to Judy and Andres to have dinner and watch the sun set (maybe being lucky enough to see the green flash since they have the perfect spot to see it in Esperanza.) Because of our dinner date we left La Plata around 4pm. We also wanted to drive up into Monte Carmelo to look at a property of Helen's, which we did and we really like. After looking at the property it was a mad dash back to Los Cocos , change and shower, then back to Esperanza. Judy and Andre were great hosts, as usual. We had some rum punch while dinner was cooking. Andre put on some salsa music and we had our first salsa lesson (we're suppose to hook up with them this coming weekend and go to a place in Esperanza to dance some more salsa) off the kitchen in there little house. What great people and a great time. No green flash tonight, clouds in the way. Had a wonderful dinner on the terrace. Robert, their neighbor and friend  came over after dinner and we spent the late hours discussing the Epic of Gilgamesh and how Robert has connected it with the zodiac and the constellations. I had ask Andre once what exactly Robert did. Andre said "He's a scholar." Left Esperanza very late and made our way back to Los Cocos. 

 

 It's already going to fast and I want to slow it down.

 

:-)