Sunday Strollings

Sunday Strollings

That's right, ladies.  I enjoy sitting on coastal cliffs and staring pensively into the sea.  But actually, this is the view from what we think is "Southeast Point", but I explain it all further down!

Sunday is our one day off.  Sure, we only have classes four days a week, but we are busy doing something for the community or the center on two of the other days.  Sunday is our one day of the week where we can sleep in however late we want, go wherever we want, and then do whatever we want when we get there (within reason, obviously).  So this Sunday, we looked at a map of the island that’s at the center and tried to find a place called “Southeast Point”.

 Here's a quick map of the island.  The red dot is the location of the center, conveniently southwest-facing for all those wonderful sunsets.  The yellow dot is the East Bay development that I mentioned earlier.  The purple dot is where I think we went initially on Sunday, with a hike afterwards to the actual southeast point of the island, but I'm not entirely sure.

We headed out a little after noon and tried to follow the directions.  Unfortunately, we got lost and ended up stuck in some shrubbery and had to turn around.  You see, South Caicos is not a lush, tropical island.  The interior more closely resembles a desert, with short shrubs and cacti.  When driving or hiking through the wilderness, I often feel like I'm in Africa, except instead of zebras and gazelles, we have wild donkeys.  

 While they were obviously brought to the islands for some purpose, now all they do is make noises and stare at you if you get too close.

And there's no big plains of grass - just shrubs (mostly with thorns) and rocks.  And these weird plants with bright orange veins.  Somebody (I think it was Emily...?) said that they reminded them of the plants from War of the Worlds (the new one with Tom Cruise), but I've never seen that movie so I cannot verify.  I'll just snap a picture next time we are out and I'll post it so you don't have to rely on my vague descriptions.  Anywho, although we got lost, we found these nifty old wells that are now just filled with stagnant water and are probably a major source of all the pesky mosquitos.
 

 They kind of look like this ring I saw in this videotape.

 

This is what the interior of the island looks like, although this is a path.  It's usually too thick to get through, especially because most of the plants are either nasty burrs or huge thorns.

Despite getting lost, we found our way back to the main "road" and located the correct turnoff.  After a short hike, we made it to the bay we were hoping to find, and it was worth the heat, wrong turns, and bashed in toes (next time, I don't plan on wearing my flip flops - those rocks hurt!).  

 A great sight after being lost for a half hour.

Aside from us, empty as usual.  I still can't get over the absence of people from all these beautiful beaches.

The sandy beach was actually pretty tiny - most of the coast is rock and worn down ancient coral, which is pretty cool.  But we mostly just used the beach as a resting point before hiking around the point you can see in the distance of the last picture.  Along the way there, however, I played around with the macro mode on my camera.

 Not really sure what it is.  It kind of looks like greater star coral, but I found it in a tide pool, so it seems highly unlikely.  My guess is a type of colonial tunicate (sea squirt), but that's all it really is - a guess.  There's also an urchin, but the sun's in the way.

Some snails in a tide pool.

A chiton (and a little snail, too) out of the water.  I remember learning about these in invertebrate biology, but I hadn't actually seen one until I got down here.  They're all over the rocky intertidals around the island.

 

A little snail

Here's a place where you can really see the ancient coral.

We got to the point and found a place where it was deep enough to do a little cliff jumping.  If you're wondering what the view from the place we were cliff jumping was like, it's close to the location of the first picture of this blog post.  We then decided to hike around for a little, because we were very close to the ridges which are some of the highest points on the island.  I use the term "ridge" lightly, as the maximum altitude in the entire TCI (not just South Caicos) is either 157 or 158 feet above sea level.

This is a view looking back onto the island from the point.  Due to the people as a reference point, you can see how tiny all the plants are in this picture; they really are just little shrubs.  The ridges we hiked to are to the right, but are off the screen.

Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries right after I took this picture, so you're just going to have to take my word on the rest of it.  I know, Mom, you packed me an extra battery, but I didn't think to take it with us on our hike.  Besides, I checked it before we left, and it said it was only missing one bar!  Anyway, now that I'm done being defensive, we managed to hike to the top of the highest ridge nearby, and the view was phenomenal.  We could see ocean in two directions, the town and the rest of the island in one, and a secluded, empty (aside from all the trash that washed up) beach.  Up there, the breeze was fantastic, so the heat wasn't so bad, yet you could still hear the waves crashing in the distance.  Probably my favorite spot on the island currently.  We'll go back at some point, and I'll be sure to bring extra camera batteries to make sure I get some pictures!  

After checking out the view from the ridge, we grabbed our snorkel gear, and decided to start at the secluded beach and snorkel around the point and back to our first beach.  As it turned out, this was easier said than done, as the current did not agree with our plans.  It was worth the extra exertion, as we saw a huge school of fish, probably numbering the hundreds, as we swam along the point.  These fish weren't tiny little fish, either.  Although not huge, they were probably a little big bigger than the biggest blue gill we would ever catch at Conneaut.  In the middle of them all was a fairly large barracuda, but it didn't seem hungry, as it just swam slowly around.  There was a nice coral reef along the edge of the point, with a vast sea grass bed starting a little further out.  Once around the point, we reached a shallower coral reef, and we followed this into the beach.  It was actually very fun snorkeling, as the waves broke over the reef about halfway to the beach.  The wave action not only added some excitement as it threw us back and forth, but the net motion was in towards the shore, so it made it easy to get to the beach.  Once we got to the beach, it was getting to be time to head back, as we needed to get back in time for dinner, so we packed up and headed out.  On the way back, we were stared down by some donkeys along the road, but other than that, it was fairly uneventful.  

A pretty awesome day, but now just a few quick thoughts to wrap up:

•   It would be so interesting to investigate the social behavior of the feral and semi-feral dogs down here.  We can see that there are different packs that have different territories, and it would be cool to look into it further.
• Looking at the map above and how long that trip took us makes me realize how much there is to see on this island.  Even if I saw everywhere on the island, there's still so much to see underneath the water.
• I couldn't imagine coming here in the fall.  Not only would I miss football season (actually the reason why I initially chose to come on the spring) and the whales wouldn't be migrating through, but the temperature would be unbearable.  It's been in the 70s everyday, and it is just about the perfect temperature.