Wednesday, September 29, 2004
‘Woody’ and his wife are back!
For the first time, sparing no expense, we present photographic evidence of the cheeky chappie.
You may remember back in July, 19th to be precise, we reported on the sudden disappearance of our feathered twosome conjecturing at the time as to how and why their departure could be quite so abrupt when they had been so attentive at the one-way kitchen window for so long.
Our prime theory of Woody simply abandoning the futile stalemate of a fight with his own reflection out of sheer frustration was clearly wrong for he is back fitter than ever manically beating at the window from the early morning again. He has even crafted a new technique where he is hovering, scrabbling at the window with his left foot at the same time as bludgeoning the glass with his powerful beak. It would seem that like the majority of our holidaying visitors he just took a vacation in order to recharge his batteries!
(You may, or may not, like to consult May 8th and Sept 9th last year for further references to the ongoing story)
Posted by Playa Vista @ 05:30 PM CST
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
This year for some strange reason or reasons still unknown to the meteorological boffins those tropical storms sometimes alias hurricanes just keep on happening.
Poor old Haiti has been hit hard, its decidedly poor infrastructure always contributing further to its misery. To the east and north of the DomRep too the heavy rainfall caused considerable flooding chaos. We in Boca Chica have to be thankful yet again, for we managed to escape any dangerous affects from the passing of Jeanne which brewed itself briefly into a low category hurricane as it touched our island’s most easterly coast. As it passed to the north and downgraded to a tropical storm, we saw no rising of the sea level this time, but we did endure three days of cloud, a fair bit of rain and one shortish period in the middle of the night last Wednesday of very gusty winds. Again no damage here in Boca Chica, but due to the rise in river levels and currents to our east, in particular the rivers Higuamo and Soco emptying into the sea in the area near San Pedro, we have been inundated with driftwood being forced onto and over the Boca Chica coral reef. The local council has helped in a big way employing a very large John Deere payloader and trucks to cart away the mountains of flotsam and jetsam that continued to wash up on the beach. With the beach neatly cleared of debris and the peak storm season hopefully running out of steam after this year’s unusual extravaganza Playa Vista is gratefully, after a very minor interruption to service, back to its regular sunny ‘business as usual’ disposition!
Posted by Playa Vista @ 12:12 PM CST
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Hurricanes come and thankfully they go… and even more thankfully sometimes they go without ever coming. We left you last time seemingly looking down the barrel of a gun called Ivan. It looked like there was no escape, but remarkably we managed to slip free yet again and this time in large part thanks to another hurricane. While Ivan was advancing into the southern Caribbean, Frances was still active over continental America. This created a ridge of pressure over the Caribbean which forced Ivan to take a more southerly route than has been seen in many many years affecting islands such as Curacao and Aruba and even parts of Venezuela that have never seen such phenomenon before.
Here in Boca Chica we waited and watched from the Playa Vista Terazza as Ivan whirled by several hundred miles to the south. At about 10 pm on Wednesday the sea rose to start flicking the terazza wall, and for 24 hours we watched the grand spectacle of extremely large rolling waves breaking onto the reef sending spray dozens of feet into the air and surf surging well inside our paradisal lagoon even as far as the steps leading up to the terazza itself ultimately licking the topmost step. In contrast to the roaring sea the air remained extremely placid, and a light cloud cover brought merely a sprinkling of rain on just one occasion throughout the entire time it took Ivan to swirl by. Mercifully the sum of our damage was no more than one broken plastic table leg which was crashed into by a couple of logs that floated by during the marine melee.
Some of the worst Ivan affected islands in the Caribbean this time around have previously claimed to be hurricane-free in their efforts to attract visitors… perhaps the DomRep should now take the slogan up instead!
Posted by Playa Vista @ 07:25 PM CST
Monday, September 6, 2004
The flavor of our current Caribbean season has to be hurricanes. The sea-breeze caressed pleasantly warm weather we experience allows us to enjoy a completely open-air style of life and pretty much for a full 365 days a year. This closeness of living to nature means we have to accept the reverse side of the ‘almost perfect weather coin’ too from time to time and around here the flipside does pop up in the form of the occasional tropical storm or hurricane.
We note that the subject is currently figuring prominently in the world’s media headlines because this year is setting storming new records around the globe. This week news from Florida’s latest pounding (the second in August) was echoed by extreme typhoon activity in Japan too.
Here on our island we feel that we have been ducking and diving over the last two weeks as Charley slid by to the south before thumping into Cuba and then Florida, tropical storm Earl thankfully ran out of steam just to the south of us and then most recently category 4 Frances just skirted by to the north. So big was Frances that we experienced quite strong winds and unusually warm air even down here in Boca Chica on the south coast. However, lucky though we have been so far we cannot ignore that Ivan “El Terrible” at the time of writing appears to have us right in his sites, almost as if the last three storms were tracer shells (powerful ones at that) and now the big cannon has our exact coordinates. We naturally hope that fate will intervene in our favor again, but if you see this blog space go quiet for a while it could be because we have our hands full with other matters.
Posted by Playa Vista @ 06:28 PM CST
Wednesday, September 1, 2004
If you haven’t visited Boca Chica you might not know that we probably have the world’s finest natural swimming pool right in our own backyard. If you have visited our reef-protected lagoon pool, then you will surely have noticed a couple of small green islands to the west towards the Andrés end of the Boca Chica bay. If by any chance you should be motivated to venture into checking out the two deserted islands the lagoon itself is shallow enough at almost all points to allow you to wade out to the islands, or you can take the even more leisurely route and hire one of the small pedal boats and without much effort reach the nearer of the two islands in a few minutes minutes.
As both islands are covered in lush green vegetation it is certainly not apparent from the shore that the origin and composition of the islands are quite different.
La Matica, the smaller of the two, is the first that you come to from the Boca Chica side. It is about 200 yards in length and was used as a zoo park for a number of years. The 1950s was a turning point for La Matica, because a hurricane swept the zoo park away never to be re-established, and in the same decade dredging of the existing underwater channel into the Boca Chica-Andrés port area resulted in the formation of the other island named at the time La Piedra (The Stone) which is significantly bigger than La Matica at some 700 yards in length. La Matica is covered in long-term evolving vegetation including different kinds of mangrove, aspen and sea grape whereas the vegetation of La Piedra derives from what man, wind, waves and birds have brought in over the last fifty years with the most notable result being a substantial area of Australian pine giving the island its now more familiar name of Los Pinos.
Plans were laid down quite some years ago for a walkway to be built from the shore to a point midway between the islands and develop the ensuing environment for visitors to fish, bathe and swim. These plans have been resting in some bureaucratic draw for a good many years now and so these largely undisturbed islands continue as the roosting location for a number of species of birds such as herons and white-crowned pigeons which can be seen heading off to their night time perches as they fly by the Playa Vista terraza at dusk.
Posted by Playa Vista @ 12:18 PM CST
