Wow! The past ten days were nothing short of an adventure! I loved everyone on the boat (shocker I know) and had a blast hunting iguanas! Yep hunting iguanas. Dr. John has been researching the endangered species of iguanas that only lives on a few of the islands in the bahamas for the past 30 years! He spends a week (in the past its been a month) down here every year and he brings a group of students and some alumni from his college, Earlham in Indiana. This year one of his old students who is now a professor himself, Jeff, came and brought students from Denison in Ohio. So there were six Earlham students (lets see if I get this right) – Katie, Lenny “Kravitz”, Caitlin, Hallie, Annie, and Skyler with Dr. John. The Denison group was Joel, Lenden or Leeland or Leonard (depending on the day), Danika, Hillary, Shep, and Michelle with Jeff. Then there was Lynn, the Alumni who just comes every year and she was a character. The group was really great and I really enjoyed having an excuse to tramp all over 4 different islands with nooses, nets, cages, and Orange peels hunting iguanas. It was like capture the flag but with a moving target (and no other team of course).
We started on Leaf Cay which was the easiest because all the tourist go there and feed them so we easily got them to come out to us. It was good though to get us warmed up for Allen's! Allen's cay is home of about 20 GIANT iguanas. They usually spend a whole day or two there and the record was (note was) 5 iguanas. We caught 6 (7 if you count the dead one) and man were they HUGE and pretty intimidating (especially the one that broke the noose because it was so big and proceeded to charge at my face!) We had to all work as a group and surround the iguanas, which involved lots of bush whacking which lead to lots of cuts and bruises, but no serious injury. Well if you don't count pulling 3 iguana teeth out of Bruce's arm... Then we spent a day on Flat Rock where we were bombarded by seagulls for getting to close to there nests. We also did pretty well there and the boys even found a rock that was home to four iguanas. Lastly we headed over to U cay for more baiting and catching. Lynn and I would hang out on the beach throwing “fake bait” to get the iguanas to come down from the hill and then feed them some oranges while the boys ran in behind them and netted them. It was a fun and entertaining approach on iguana snatching. Dr. John would spend the afternoons measuring each iguana and tagging them and weighing them before letting them go. I got to help with the process and learn all these facts about iguanas and other reptilian creatures. I loved every day. Lastly we spent a couple of nights down in the exuma park at Bush Hill which had a different species of iguanas we called the easter egg iguanas because they were all different colors. There were red ones, green, orange, blue, and even the illusive yellow ones! They were very tricky to catch but fun to hunt non-the-less.
Shep, Skyler, Lenden, Katie, and Lenny Kravitz
Highlights include daily joy baths (we needed them), jumping off the front of the boat, picnics at camp everyday, including the delicious every flavor pringles imaginable. Releasing the giant iguanas from Allen's, and watching leeland and Lenny Kravitz and Katie wait for one stubborn iguana to come out of its hole and into their trap (at least 45 minutes). We also met up one night over at Bruce and Sheilas friends boat, The Coral Reef that does a lot of study work and captures fish for an aquarium up in Chicago. They invited us for delicious ice-cream one night and we swapped stories and enjoyed hearing about life on a big boat with ac and real toilets... Jeff, who hardly spoke, read a bed time story to Lynn and I, and Euchre was played a few nights as well as a couple harry potter discussion and getting a whole new list of books to read! We also went to the atlantis aquarium when we got back to nassau and forgetting that I was with Biology people, took the responsibility of showing them the shark tanks. An hour later we finally make it back to the big aquarium... It was really fun and I could watch Mantarays all day long anyway.
our beautiful camp site
There had been a discussion all week about wether sweet tea or unsweetened tea is better (I know. Apparently some people live in the dark ages and still drink tea without sugar.) which escalated because lynn insisted on having unsweetened and naturally I took a boat poll on which people prefer. It was a tie so Sheila being the wonderful and accommodating person she is made both on our last night on the boat. I notice that the sweet is already farther down than the unsweetened and waste no time pointing this out which some how turns into a contest to see which pitcher would be finished first. Sweet tea is continuously on top even with lynn drinking 8 glasses (I only had 3). There are about 2-3 left in mine and 6-8 in Lynne when I go down to get my jacket. Lenny Kravitz and Leeland have decided to help out and I get back to find mine with 5 glasses and the unsweetened empty. Of course I don't give up that easy and swear mine has more in it. Everyone laughs and insists I am being a poor loser. I decide to try it and sure enough the sweet tea has been DILUTED with unsweetened and I therefore win by cheating. I still don't know who did it, but I know it happened. Sheila was the unbiased judge who agreed the sweet was diluted. So Lynn, if you are reading this, know you still owe me 5 bucks.
A special thanks needs to go out to Michelle and Lenny Kravitz for all these photos (my camera never sees the light of day)
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