Sauntering........

 Forecast was for clear skies yesterday and today. Here's what clear skies looks like:

That is a Schofferhofer Hefeweizen I'm holding. I bought a 6 pack of that at Morales. That's a really great German Weissbeir and I found  at the grocery in Vieques.  I was blown away.  Not at all what you would expect to find. 

As you can tell from the picture we spent the day at La Plata. There was about 15 people on the beach when we arrived, which was pretty late, like nearly 12 noon. Wasn't long before we got set up that a group came in from Littleboat sailing. 

I walked down to speak with Jorge, but he wasn't captaining the Hobie today. It was someone else. I ask where Jorge was and he told me in San Juan. While I was there the group ask if I would take a picture, which I did. 

Spoke with lots of different people yesterday. One young guy, Jeremy came up to us quite nervous. His battery in his rental car had gone dead and he wondered if we had any jumper cables. Nope no cables I told him. Next he told us, desperately,  that it was their last day and "he" hadn't really gotten an early start, like his girlfriend had wanted, and now with this snafu the day was really turning sour. During the conversation he  mentioned  that he couldn't get any cell phone signal. I told him to calm down and I would drive him out to the pavement by Caracas where he could call the rental car owner and if that didn't work we could drive on up to the refuge center and see what they might be able to do. During the drive out he kept thanking me. I just wanted the poor guy to take it all in stride.  I told him he was too young to get so frazzled by a little hiccup like this (he was 24). I continued opining, adding that  "if you don't have some kind of issue while vacationing on Vieques you haven't really lived it" and that this would make for great conversation and memories when he got back home.  We hit the pavement, he got hold of the rental agency and we drove back to La Plata.  The four of us hung out under the cabana where we learned that they didn't have any sunscreen either. We helped them out with that too. 

 After Jeremy and Kate left that we met another group of youngsters (I hate saying that but it's true, they weren't much older than my daughter). The foursome was heading out snorkeling and ask if it would be a good idea to go out without any fins? They had 4 masks, but only 2 sets of fins. I advised them that, given the surf, it would be some tough going without fins, even more so since they were unfamiliar with the reef.  I offered them our fins to take out. The couple that needed the fins were getting married on Vieques in a couple days. We told them to leave their stuff with us at the cabana and we would watch it for them. They told me their names but I can't remember now. Anway, the two on the right, in the picture below,  are getting married  this Saturday.

Somewhere around 3pm I told Lorrie that I was going over to Escondida. We had drove down to it last week one day and saw it was a mess.  I enjoy walking over to that beach. Walking gives a completely different perspective to part of the refuge that I think most people fail to see. They're anxious to see the beach.  But there's a lot to see walking the dirt road, sauntering. Thoreau talked about "sauntering" many times before his Lyceum audience:

"I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, - who had genius, so to speak, for sauntering" ~ Walking -  Thoreau 1862

So I walked the dirt road to Escondia. Watched the butterflies in the mud, check out the cotton tree/bush and took it all in at a different pace and from a different perspective. Doesn't take long from La Plata before you see Escondida:

 Escondida is a beach that can swing to both sides of the pendulum. Some times we find it picture perfect and other times it just looks like sheit. This trip is has mostly looked like sheit. Covered in dried sea grass/seaweed with hardly any beach exposed:

Not sure if you can tell from the above picture, but it's all seaweed until the wave breaks. But I wasn't looking for a sandy beach, I was ready for a trashy one. That's exactly what I got too. As soon as I got to the edge I saw this monster wad of rope. It was so big that there was no way I was going to be able to move it (much like the huge wad of blue rope that's between La Plata and Econdida and has been there for at least 3 years. I moved it up and out of the water last November).

Hard to tell from the picture, but it was probably 7 foot across and a couple feet wide. I have no idea what it weighted. I decided to focus on the normal stuff I find and there was plenty of it:

As I was working my way down the beach, doing my cleanup, I noticed a palm. It was the palm I had replanted when we came in 2010 after hurricane Tomas. It had uprooted the palm and the whole thing was laying in the ocean. I dug a monster hole and replanted it. Problem was I couldn't really get it stand up straight, it had a lean to it and still does nearly 3 1/2 years later. But it looked great and has really grown:

Here it is right after I planted it

I ended picking up 2 full bag of trash on Escondida. Got the bulk of trash off the beach. It still could use some work. Trash duty complete I sauntered back over to La Plata.

We ended up staying on La Plata till everyone else had left. While we were enjoying it all Little Boat came back in from an afternoon tour:

After they left so did we, close the beach down. 

I'm running a day behind on posts, tomorrow is Muchos Gatos and let me tell you it was eerily unreal. 

:-)