5 posts tagged “peurto rico”

We did this yesterday too (same day as the Super Secret Beach). Golden Eye filmed a scene here. My fingers are getting kind of tired so I'm going to skip some of the science.

The fun part for me was the "day in the life" film that they put together for visitors. It stars the folks who run the observatory and tracks them through a "regular" day--which is pretty obviously fictional, but I believe they just squashed lots of events from other days into one to give us something interesting to watch. The scene were the power shorts out and they bring everything back online was pretty funny: none of these folks are actors, the event is obviously staged, and it felt a little bit like a Star Trek episode ("If we divert power from the shields to the engines and reverse the polarity of the tachyon beam ...")

Still it was cool. The engineering behind this thing is awesome. There's a huge sinkhole (300m across) lined with hundreds of (I think) metal panels that focus distant (and faint) radio waves to funny 3/4 dome shape (the "Gregorian Collector") which reflects and focuses the radio waves a second time to another reflector within the dome, which reflects the and focuses the waves a final time to a cluster of sensitive collectors.

There are motors which can move this giant, suspended dome contraption around to look at different regions of the sky. As this big suspended thing rotates and the as the Gregorian Collector moves side-to-side along it's track, the whole contraption tilts a little relative to the ground and messes up where the focal point of the radio waves should be. So they have another set of vertical cables, along with pulleys and motors that they use to level it off to within a millimeter of where they want it--all monitored by lasers. Neat.

There were a couple things I didn't really understand, though.

1. The diagrams of the observatory all include a "transmitter" component. I don't get it. I thought it just received radio waves from planets, pulsars, galaxies, etc. Are we transmitting to? To whom? For what?

2. There's a more conventional looking antenna that's suspended from the same contraption as the Gregorian Dome. I think it's where James Bond and the villian du jour end up fighting in Golden Eye. The diagrams say it's for looking at a particular frequency of the spectrum (420MHz?). It's explained (sort of) on this Arecibo page, but I don't think I totally get how the Gregorian Dome and the dangly antenna serve different purposes and why they're so differently shaped. Maybe the Dome is for looking at a broader range of the spectrum or a large swath of sky and the dangly antenna is for a narrow band of the spectrum and/or a very narrow circle of sky?

In any case, we got a good hike out of it. I also learned that there's a pulsar out there that rotates over 10 times per second! That's mind-blowing. Something the size of a star is out there spinning at ten times per second. Not a good neighborhood of the universe for life I bet! The cool part is that this pulsar emits radio waves (that's how we found it, I think) and we can tell it's period by the interval of the radio bursts. Apparently, this particular pulsar has kept perfect time (according to our atomic clocks) to within a microsecond (a millionth of a second) over a span of seven years. Neato. I wonder if some alien civilization has ever adopted a unit of time measurement based on the period of "nearby" pulsar.

You know a beach is secret when the locals haven't even heard of it. One of our guide books recommended this Shack's Beach claiming there are underwater caves just off-shore. It sounded awesome and it was right near our hotel. So we spent, I'm not exaggerating, about 70 minutes driving around trying to find it. It's off of route 4466 on an un-marked road in an area with no parking and no signs (except "no parking" signs).

One of my best friends once told me that "real happiness takes work". In traveling, it seems that the harder a place is to get to, the more worthwhile it is. So true in this case.

Before this beach, I would've said that the best snorkeling of my life was "Aquarium" in Maui. That snorkel spot was accessible only via a mile long, unmarked path over jagged lava rocks. I think Shack's Beach is even better on some levels.

* Coral. The coral starts almost immediately off-shore and is in hugely elaborate formations: columns, overhangs, walls, etc. in water from 1' to 25' deep. Beautiful, healthy fan coral, brain coral, purple-y coral (not the scientific name) and crazy "flower coral" (as Angela called it for it's petal-like formation)

* Fish. Loads of fish. Not as many as Aquarium and smaller, but still a lot. We brought flashlights on this trip (even though it was morning)... some of these fish reflect beautiful under our high-powered LED cannon. Awesome.

* "Critters". Angela likes to poke in all the holes with her flashlight and she's gotten really good at finding stuff. Little stick crabs, baby fish, fish eggs... all sorts of things. The highlight of the trip for her was when she flipped over a shell and then a fish came by and flipped the shell back. So Angela flipped it again... and the fish flipped it back. Interesting. One more time Angela flipped it, and the fish came by and righted the shell again. Our theory is that the fish was hiding some eggs in the abandoned shell. If fish could talk, this one would have had some colorful language to describe that experience ("Argh!! I just flipped that!!")

* Since we didn't dive this day, I figured I was safe from any kind of lung-exploding calamity, so I spent a bunch of time on the bottom and just swimming around the formations. Great fun!

* "Sea centipedes". These guys were as long as piano-players index finger, white, and had bulgy, segmented bodies. It would really gross me out to find one anywhere but in a reef. But in the reef, they were pretty neat. Since we went down with flashlights, Angela had something she could use to poke at them and flip them around--she had good fun.

* I found some orange colored snails with white polka dots (the shells were orange with white polka dots too) on a giant fan. I thought that was pretty sweet, but apparently Angela had been seeing them all along.

* When we started, we were the only ones in the water and when we left, there was, I think, one other person in with us. So cool.

* There's a big luxury condo development going in practically next door to the beach and a few of the locals had some signs out protesting the project. After swimming around that reef, I agree. We shouldn't build there or the reef will be gone. People are going to come out with their sun-block, their bacteria, their bug spray and they'll step on the coral and kill it. Better that places like this stay hard to get to.

We visited El Yunque ("The Anvil") rain forest preserve today. To prep for the trip, we spent an hour last night researching the plant, insect and animal life of the forest. Notably, we read up on the lives of stick bugs in a fictional magazine Walking Stick Weekly. I love that someone devoted the time to create a magazine, by stick bugs, for stick bugs that reviews fictional scientific literature that contains real facts. And that they did it in flash. It's great.

So we spent a good part of today looking for walking sticks (aka stick bugs). I'll upload a picture of our find later.

Here are the highlights and learnings of El Yunque...

* There's a small water fall with fresh water shrimp and little crabs in the pool at the bottom. Surrounding the pool are Peurto Ricans eating hot dogs (seriously).

* The paths in the forest are paved, which sounds lame, but is actually required. The ground is wet, effectively, always. El Yunque gets about 10 feet of rainfall annually. So anything other than a paved path would be no fun to walk on. They made this path fun to walk on by keeping it extremely narrow and pretty steep. (If you ever visit and want to retrace our steps, we took the Mina trail down to the falls and "Big Tree" trail back up and then walked a kilometer or so on the road)

* There are so many plant species it's ridiculous. Even looking at a single tree, there are five or six different types of vines or "air plants" (epiphytes) growing on the tree--and usually some moss. The competition for sunlight is fierce. Fast growing bamboo, seeds that sit dormant in the ground until a hurricane or landslide wipe out competing trees and then spring up really fast to take advantage of a break in the canopy, leaves that are sombrero-size wide...

* Another neat thing about the leaves are their shapes. We learned that the plants don't want to let them get soggy from accumulated water so they all have elaborate grooves, rides and often a rubbery coating. Many of the leaves have throny sides and some of them even have thorns growing on the face of the leaves. The goal is to not have your leaves get eaten.

* Stick bugs eat the leaves and there are about 0.4 stick bugs per square meter in the forest (not making that up, see the Walking Stick Weekly magazine above). I think snails must eat the leaves--we saw a lot of pretty big snails in the forest (shells just a little bit smaller than your palm).

* Tons of spider webs just off the path, but most of them belonged to the same species of small spider. I saw one catch something small, but it ate whatever it was right away before I could get a picture.

* The sounds of the forest are really cool. Coquis frogs, lots of different bird sounds, the running water, the crackling of wood as tree rubs on tree in the wind, the sound of large leaves falling from the canopy to the ground... it's the stuff meditation tapes are made of.

* Which reminds me: we got there about 8:30am, ahead of the tourists. Do not go with a tour guide or near a tour guide and definitely get there early--the park opens at 7:30am. When we were getting back to our car there were was a group going down with a guide. His loud voice and semi-apathetic entourage made us glad we were out of there before they got started.

* Lizards! El Yunque is home to a metric shit-load of lizards and Angela caught one! It almost immediately took a crap on her, but I snapped a couple good pictures. I got the feeling she thought it was worth it. I love her.

* Butterflies. A few semi-remarkable butterflies flitting around. Which reminds me of the butterfly art gallery we saw later in the day in Old San Juan.

* This whole time (we were hiking about two hours) we spent a good portion of it looking for stick bugs. I feel like I got a more complete El Yunque experience because I took so much time and mental energy to really examine each leaf and stick at our stops. I'm not being sarcastic either--we really drank this place in. It's magical.

Early start today for some scuba diving!

* We dove with Copa Marina Beach Resort. Great staff, beautiful location, beautiful premises. The diving itself was kind of ho-hum. The highlight was Angela got another close encounter with a giant green moray eel (biggest one yet). We didn't get to do the famous wall-dive because the sea was too choppy and the captain didn't want to risk getting caught in a storm that far from shore (it was looking pretty dark).

* The first dive was about 60' or so. Noting that here because the dive book is out of pages.

* In between dives, I was goofing around in the water with my mask and fins and did a little free dive to 15' or 20'. Big no-no. Apparently, free-diving is a really bad idea if you dove the same day. Lung damage kind of bad. So... no more of that.

* Second dive was about the same as the first. I stayed a little bit higher than the rest of the group because I got a little worried about lung damage from my equipment-less expedition. Also, we were getting cold. Nothing especially notable besides a big puffer and, what I think was, a smallish tuna (which was still elbow-to-fingertips long).

* On the way back, I got sea sick for the first time I can remember. No fun at all. This dive-master's cure for sea-sickness was to pour really cold water down my back. It made me forget being sick, that's for sure! He suggested that I take off my shortie (wet suit) to stay cool because that would help my queasiness. My sea-sickness went away, but now I'm really sun-burned from riding back to shore without anything on my back or shoulders. D'oh.

* Next came the real highlight of the day: the Guanica Dry Forest. We went for a two hour hike and, before I go into the details, I will first say: a) we didn't plan for it to be so long, b) we were the only ones in the park, c) when we got back at 4:40pm on a Friday the one guy manning the booth was pissed that he didn't get to go home early. On to the details...

* Lots of lizards--these ones with color! All sorts of trees, cactus, "air moss", flowers, etc. Allegedly there are over 400 species of birds in this park: we saw three and I have a picture of an iridescent green one that I'll upload later. The real high light were the hidden caves.

* Off of the main trail (way off the main trail actually) I spotted a crevice that angeled down. On closer inspection, it opened up to a big cave--two story house size--with adjacent rooms equally large and lit from above so we could see. It looked some people had been there before us so we had to check it out. We're about an hour from the guard station and, remember, we're *the only ones* in the park at this point. So we descended into the caves and explored around. Big rooms, some cool rock structures, giant (dead) insects and some cool green rock walls. On the third chamber we got a little nervous about where it was going and how we'd get back.

* It took some mental energy but we made it back to the off-the-trail mini-trail that we came from and eventually back to a real trail. Note to anyone visiting Guanica: the map is not even topologically correct. Forget scale (which is also wrong), but the trails don't even join up the way it says they do. With that realization, we decided to retrace our steps and made the hour-plus up-hill trek back to the guard. He greeted us with some angry Spanish that began with "Momasita..." and probably ended with "... and the other guys are already down at the bar!"

* An interesting aside on the roads of Peurto Rico: they don't have many overpasses so most of the "express ways" have stop lights. It was pouring rain on the way back. Angela's been reading me magazine articles during our drives, but she's pretty well-mined her stolen copy of "Psychology Today" so we listened to some Latin-American disco mix on the radio. Cool. The radio DJ actually mixed the songs together instead of just talking over the music: I liked it.

* ... and back home to the Marriott in Aguidilla. Which brings us to right now. -phew-

Vieques is a small island of the eastern coast of Peurto Rico. Angela and I spent two days exploring the island from our home base at "Casa de Kathy" (kind of a B&B, but without the Breakfast). Highlights of Vieques...

* Lots of wild horses everywhere. On the side of the road, in people's yards, in the road and under the local youth who ride around bare-back with home-made rope bridles.

* Our trusty mount was a rented wreck from Louis Legouillue. It had no air-bags (they had been cut out), a non-functional speedometer (perpetually read 0mph), power nothing, ants and... no gas. Empty. He rented us a car with an empty tank of gas. Oh, and the check engine light never went off. "F-, would not buy again".

* Snorkeling! Mosquito Peer" (the first day) was awesome. We got really close to a green moray eel in about 4' of water. Crystal clear view of him (and him of us). The highlight of the trip was we found our first octopus (outside of a restaurant)! He was well hidden in a crevice, but I spotted the suckered arms. We spent some time trying to get him to come out (dropping little pebbles on him and generally being annoying), but he stayed put. Lots of small fish. And we were the only ones there. This is a theme for the trip so far.

* On the Mosquito Peer trip we also stopped by a giant 300-old ceiva tree that the books suggest visiting. It's a giant tree. We learned (after visiting) that they're also poisonous and that you shouldn't stand under them in the rain.

* For restaurants: skip "Mucho Gusto". It took us an hour to get food and another hour to get the check. I'm sure I'll relate this story to some hapless friends later, but... just don't go there.

* The second day we went to "Blue Beach" and swam out to a little island off shore for more snorkeling. We underestimated the distance to the island and swam out to it diagonally. On the way, school of smallish "food" fish followed us with a giant barracuda in the center of the school. We think that the fish were trying to hide under us and the barracuda was on the hunt. We've seen quite a few barracuda here and in Belize, but this one was the biggest. Once we got to the island (after about 15 minutes of finning) we found a ray trying to hide in the sand and a turtle just on the edge of vision. Angela found a lobster, a little spider creature and a shrimp. In true naturalist fashion Angela conducted some behavioral experiments testing the animals reactions to having their antennae pulled, being held and poked at. On the way back we swam directly to shore from the island--way, way shorter.

* Another cool part of the Blue Beach trip was we ran into a "local" kid (actually from Indiana who moved out there a year ago) and his cousins. His truck was broken so we gave him a ride back his buddy's house and in exchange he bought us some much-needed gas and gave us a free rental on a jet-ski!

* Jet-ski rental. Awesome. I've done this once before and... polluting has never been so fun. Angela was a great passenger and we caught a lot of air (we were on the open ocean... 3' chop here and there to play on)

* That same day we hunted around for "Black Sand Beach". We walked for about an hour over rocks and sand trying to find this place: no luck. Lots of crabs and washed up plastic bottles (even a small refrigerator door)... no black sand.

* The bio-luminescent bay. There's a special mangrove bay where the water is extremely salty (our guide said "40x the salinity of normal sea-water"). This, along with a constant 84-degree temperature creates an environment that's perfect for a particular species of dinoflagelate--who glows. This uni-cellular creature contains both of the chemicals in glow-sticks and when the cell wall senses a change in pressure, they mix the chemicals and glow. So when you swim in this bay at night, they *really* glow: like firefly bright. Moving your hands around in the water looks like you're throwing blue fireballs around. And when you lift your arm out of the water, the little droplets flash with light. "Magical" would be a good word for it except for the science is sold every halloween. This particular bay is the only bay (according to our guide) that glows year round.

We kayaked out to the bay and provided the local six-legged fauna with their nutritional needs. Angela and I need some work on our kayaking skills. We go mostly in a circle unless we do two lefts to every right. Angela says my arms are better for swimming than rowing, I think that only applies to my right arm.

* I forgot to mention the chickens, dogs and lizards. There are lots of them everywhere and none are domesticated. Roosters are a lot prettier on mute.

* The next day, we saw the light house and an old fort. Being morning people, we arrived before either opened. Then we were off to catch our ferry to the big-island town of Fajardo (next stop Aguidilla)