Sorry for the lack of posting. I’ve been away. You should try disconnecting from the world for a bit. It’s liberating!
And now for a story of my rendezvous with Jordana Brewster and a cautionary tale of our fragile planet.
As the title of the post explains, one of the places I’ve just returned from is Honduras. Specifically, the island of Roatán. And it is a beaut. Reminds me in a lot of ways of Hawaii. The sea. The sand. The humidity. The monkeys that jump on your head and steal things from your pockets. Wait, what?
Doing what I do, you don’t get to spend a whole lot of time in one place. So with the brief stop I had in Honduras, I headed over to Daniel Johnson’s Monkey and Sloth Hangout. They take rescue animals, give them a safe place to live and teach people about them. This was a capuchin monkey (above), the kind you stereotypically see dancing on the street for money. No wonder he took to me immediately, as I am quite the organ grinder.
As the name of the business implies, you’ll also get to see SLOTHS. So precious, and check out the look of peace on her face. This particular sloth was named Jordana Brewster. Yes, like the actress from the Fast and Furious movies. People name animals strange things, because animals never bother to tell us their real names. I named my boy dog McLovin and he seems okay with that, but what if his real name is Mephisto, Eldest of the Prime Evils and Ruler of The Realm of Hatred, and he’s just resigned to answering to “McLovin” because I give him Greenies™ Treats?
All things considered, I’d gladly take this Jordana home to snuggle with over the other one. And by “all things considered,” I mean that my wife reads my website and I like to stay married.
After my snuggle rendezvous with Jordana Brewster (a completely truthful phrase that now exists in perpetuity on the internet) I went snorkeling on the world’s second largest reef. Captain Moody (pictured in the boat at the top of the post) took me to the edge of the reef where the sea went from 5 feet to a sudden 150-foot drop. Amazing. Honduras is the Spanish word for “depths” and it may not be because of this beautiful dive spot, but that’s what I’m going with. While I was there I got to see this big grouper (above) doing what I can only imagine is making a Skype call.
The reefs and beaches around Roatán are home to so many different kinds of sea life, like this sting ray. It’s a wonderful ecosystem to behold and it hangs precariously in the balance of things, especially given the idiocy of humans. Captain Moody was telling me that the developer of a nearby tourist attraction was killing parts of the reef by building a concrete retaining wall to hold sand for his fake beach. Yes, the unscrupulous guy is building a fake beach a hundred yards away from a real beach so that he can charge admission.
Sometimes I feel like we are long overdue for another asteroid like the one that killed the dinosaurs. But this time, maybe the asteroid can be smaller and only hit the developer’s fake beach. Coincidentally, 66 million years ago that huge extinction-level asteroid hit in nearby Chicxulub, Mexico, so maybe there was a greedy velociraptor back then imperiling things with his ill-conceived tourist trap when the Universe decided to push the reset button.
Anyway, we’re here on this planet for a short time. Get out and see some of it before the reset button gets pushed again.