Blue Iguanas

We decided to spend the morning exploring the East End of the island.  GCI is a safe place in general, so eight of packed into the rental van and headed out.

 

Our first stop was to learn about the native blue iguanas.

 

I won't bore you with the details, but in a nutshell, in recent years there were only a handful of these reptiles in the wild and now they're working to restore the population.

 

All of you fact-seekers can read more about it here.

 

I did listen during the guided tour, but I really was more interested in getting some nice photos.  Speaking of photos, after we got back to our hotel following the stingrays, I went to recharge my dead camera battery from my new point-and-shoot and put in the extra battery.  Much to my dismay, I discovered that my charger didn't work.  A new waterproof camera, a beautiful island, and two dead batteries wasn't exactly what I had in mind. 

 

No worries though.  All of our activities were water free for the day's exploring, so I was good to go with my other camera in hand.

The majority of the island is thick, thick mangrove forest.

 Meet the blue iguanas... 

 

 It was mating season, so this guy is trying to look all sexy and stuff.

 The kids got to meet a real-deal zoologist.  If you look closely, there's an iguana hiding in the tall grass under the wooden cage.

 In our research before the trip, Steve discovered one of the island birds is a red-footed booby.  I'm sure you can imagine all of the jokes and one liners that went along with that.  Nonetheless, we all were on the look out for boobies.

 

None were sighted, but we were able to have a close look at a pecker.

 

I don't think we'll ever grow up.

It was a scorcher, so we headed back to the gift shop to cool off before heading out into the botanical gardens.