Friday, April 7, 2017

Havana Part 1

The stunning street in front of El Capitolio

I've been really lax about the blog, as some people may or may not have noticed. Between the various other projects at home and work that won out, this blog just fell to the side. But today is a mellow day, we have a strong windstorm going on outside, I have a cat curled up in a ball on my lap, and I have a cup of my favorite smokey black tea in hand. Seems like a perfect time to tell you a bit about our time in Havana. 

We loved it! Our original plans were to spend all of our time in Havana when we arrived....but we ended up arriving during the mourning period for Fidel Castro - no booze, no music, no nightlife (although we are old farts and don't usually stay out late). Because of this we decided to cut our time in Havana short at the beginning and add more time on at the end when there might be music in the streets again. I'm glad we were there to see pre and post-mourning period because Havana was like a different city when we came back.

We couldn't help but get suckered into the touristy-tour in an old car in Havana. Don't worry - I wasn't actually driving this beauty...the driver was cracking himself up when he decided to put me there for a photo, so I went along with it. The tour was great though because it gave us the lay of the land in about an hour and after that we wandered Havana mostly all on foot with an occasional cab (also usually old cars like this without the shine). This photo was taken in Revolution Square. Yes, the Revolution Square.

Driving along the Malecón with Castillo de los Tres Santos Reyes Magnos del Morro in the background.

Water trucks distributing water to Cubans in the street. I never really figured out if this means that many Cubans in Havana don't have access to running water? I'm guessing it might? I'm not sure I have the time to go into everything we learned about Cuba and communism. It sure was a different communism than the communism in Vietnam (which really is more capitalistic). Both countries were similar in that they still seemed to love displaying lots of propaganda! 

We arrived shortly after Cubans were given the ability to purchase property again. And open private restaurants. And so, to us, it became obvious that there are "haves" and "have nots" in this society..... something Castro didn't want (if I understand him with my relatively average knowledge of his history). Anyway, email me if you want more information on this and our impressions of Cuban politics - it was fascinating seeing and learning about this country.

Remember Obama? Oh man, this makes me want to cry. I wish I had bought that poster so I could stare at it and dream. But I also loved the one of the Statue of Liberty in an old car above Obama.

Don't judge me, but I'm not usually the kind of person who travels for architecture. Jay isn't really either. We travel for wild places, to see things that might go extinct in our lifetime, to hike in forests, and dive on threatened reefs. To put our money into sustainable tourism. But in Havana, the architecture was amazing and we were quickly sucked into the gorgeous squares, crumbling or restored buildings, and wonderful people. We actually spent days just walking around staring at buildings and reading about their history in our guidebook. This is Cathedral de San Cristobal de la Habana - finished in 1748 and known for its asymmetrical towers.

Gran Teatro de La Habana from Parque Central
Cuban, including Havana, is incredibly safe and you can happily wander the streets at night....even the unlit streets. This is great because this is a cash economy and you always have a fair amount of cash on you (probably compared to the average Cuban). By the way - no credit cards and no ATMs work for Americans; you have to bring all your cash for the entire trip and it should, preferably be Canadian because there is a surcharge on the US dollar.

The wonderful view from our bedroom in our casa. Casa particulars are homestays and they are a wonderful way to get to know a Cuban family and see their way of life. We loved every casa we stayed at.....this one in Centro Habana was run by a funny man named Rossell - he didn't speak a lick of English and our Spanish was rough (Jay is infinitely better than me). But Rossell had perfected hand gestures and loud/funny expressions in order to get the point across to his quarry. I loved him!

I so, so, so wanted to see a performance at Gran Teatro de La Habana (Grand Theatre in Havana). But all performances were cancelled due to Castro's death and performances were up and running when we were back in Havana about 10 days later, but nothing fell on the nights we were there. =( Sad. But a great excuse to go back...I would do anything to see a ballet or an opera in this stunning building.

We spent an entire day walking and wandering around Centro and Old Havana....including hanging with all the Cubans along the Malecón....who were doing nothing but staring at the view along with us. Well, some folks were fishing or smooching partners but most just stared....taking in the view. Jay was ready to jump in and snorkel when he saw this water. Not knowing a damn thing about the sewage treatment in the area, I told him he was insane and we stayed dry. Thankfully.

Wonderful modern sculpture in Plaza de San Francisco de Asis

Castillo de los Tres Santos Reyes Magnos del Morro at dusk

Our last night in Havana brought the booze back! Here is a passionfruit mojito. I think I had a few mojitos every day. I was Cuba right? Soooo wonderful...actually some of the mojitos sucked, but others were made properly and were as refreshing as a cocktail can get in the tropics.

The Granma - the yacht that took Fidel and other revolutionaries from Mexico to Cuba in 1956.

Cars on the street from our balcony

Our shared taxi to Trinidad....the blog I will write in a few months the way things are going right now. =)

Saturday, January 7, 2017

California and Washington in October

I know that many folks are waiting for the Cuba blogs to appear, but I'm the kind of person who likes to work in order whenever possible....soooo here is a blog about our October adventures. I'll get to December visits with family and Cuba soon, I promise. But isn't this a pretty picture too? I took this image of a seiner and the Olympic Mountains from Fort Ebey State Park on Whidbey Island when Jay's mom, Allison, was visiting us. What a view! What a day that was!

The beginning of October was spent in Vermont for a friend's wedding and the middle of the month was spent in Boonville, CA for Jay's cousin's wedding. David and Lisa found quite the amazing place, The Tollhouse, for their wonderful celebration! The Toll House provided lots of different places to sleep with real beds, but we were stoked to finally try glamping in one of their tents! And it really was glamorous camping - we didn't even have to pack sleeping bags as we had fluffy down comforters, a real bed, and heat in the tent! Crazy swank! Our glamping tents are in the photo above....our tent is on the right and Jay's cousin Amy and her husband Avner had the tent to the left. It was awesome to stand and watch the stars with them, even if we were freezing our bums off.

The path between the main house, the ceremony yurt, and our glamping tents was a wonderful area that attracted lots of California scrub jays.

The ceremony yurt. I love yurts! It was lovely to walk up the hill to Dave's friend playing the saxophone for the guests.

 Top couple! David and Lisa....

I can't claim that I took this photograph - one of David and Lisa's friends took it. But it captures the joy and love we all felt for David and Lisa this weekend!

I am one lucky girl to be a part of this family now......we were missing some key family members in person but not in heart. David and Lisa's friend took this photo too.

The next morning at breakfast the White family gave a shout out photo to my father celebrating his birthday in NY!

 Allison and Jim had never seen a redwood. We took care of that problem thanks to Boonville!

 The silent wonder of big trees....

We stopped for lunch at Navarro Vineyards

We spent the night near Point Reyes National Seashore but never had time to explore the region. Our flight was delayed the next day but we didn't know that until we were through security at the airport. Way to not tell us about the delay Alaska Airlines! We could have had the entire morning and early afternoon at the seashore had we known! Damn.

Allison came to visit us in Washington after the wedding. Some day we will get Jim to come with her so he realizes that the state doesn't bite! He might never leave if we ever got him here! Just look at this gorgeous day at Fort Ebey State Park on Whidbey Island....this park is a great reason to visit in and of itself.

Found two massive prince mushrooms in the park that I carried back to the car, babied on the drive home, and schemed dinner ideas over. Until I cut them up at home and yup, despite the firmness of the stem, they were loaded with dreaded maggots. Those dreams disappeared quickly. But I spread the gills all over our backyard in the hopes that some spores might like our Douglas fir?? Right? I hope!

Epic dinners are par for the course in our household when Allison visits! Here we have Douglas fir rubbed squab (for the carnivores) with a reduced wine and morel sauce. I had the same thing with a portobello mushroom. Darwin wanted some.

Lester was being far too cute one of the mornings Allison was visiting. One of our cat sitters referred to him as a "Velcro cat" and now you can see why.

On Allison's last day in WA we played tourist in Seattle - stopping at the Space Needle and eating at Renee Erikson's Bar Melusine.

The Space Needle makes everyone stop and get their photo taken before you can head up to the top, which we were not super excited about until we all decided to make fish faces. That was far more entertaining.

University of Washington under a rainbow

All October photos are here: https://goo.gl/photos/rAvBYvSVAZkLjTmNA

Thursday, January 5, 2017

Annual 2016 photo collage

Click on this image to enlarge it for the full effect! Happy new year!

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Carrie Bow Cay Field Station

Green Heron
Jay has been going to Carrie Bow Cay Field Station, run by the Smithsonian, for about 12 years now (13?). He has helped our friend Randi with her PhD research, he works for the Smithsonian on their reef monitoring program (described here with Jay's photo: http://ccre.si.edu/reef_assessment.html), and now he is doing his own PhD research at Carrie Bow. Throughout these years I've always been a bit envious of my tropical biologist husband, but I comforted myself with the knowledge that I love temperature marine science and, heck, I even got to dabble in polar marine science while diving under the ice in Antarctica (go here and read blogs around this dates for those stories). But I still really wanted to go with Jay to Carrie Bow and see this island that had become so special to him. So this year, finally, Jay decided he could use some help on the island with his research. We booked our flights and the lab space and we were off. On election day. Noooooo. Flying to Belize to do research on a remote tropical island when your country just let you down by electing a man who is threatened by science and who doesn't understand the scientific method....well....let's just say that this turned out to be a really tough week for both Jay and me. It is hard to motivate to be a scientist when science is going to be undermined by the new administration. We powered through Jay's research thanks to unwavering support and encouragement from our families via email and chats. But there were no other scientists on the island to commiserate with and the station managers (typically older retired couples) didn't want to talk about the election (I have my opinions about why). So my first visit to Carrie Bow wasn't exactly how I imagined it happening.....but I am so glad I was there with Jay so we were together during the disheartening news of the election. And I really did love Carrie Bow - it is a gorgeous research station that is perfectly situated for all kinds of amazing science. Maybe I should study tropical crustaceans? Or snails? Or clams??

Carrie Bow from the dock

Carrie Bow from a wide shallow reef that runs far off the island

We spent our first day setting up a coral torture, I mean thermal tolerance, experiment. Three bins, two experiments, two temperatures, and lots of cute little beakers that held the individual corals in place (not in this photo). I'm not going to get into the real details of what Jay is doing for his research, I'll leave it up to him to chat with folks about that. If you are curious, ask him because it is really interesting work!

Jay does all his work in water so shallow you can stand up, but it helps to have a mask and snorkel. Here he is collecting some coral for the thermal tolerance experiment.

We cut the tips (called nubbins - how cute!) off the coral and used some marine epoxy to fasten the nubbins to these tiny petri dishes. Each coral was assigned a number and experiment and then placed in the appropriate tank.

You can see the one tank with a water heater in it..... looks great right? Well, we ran into problems from the start with this experiment - which luckily wasn't the main reason why we were there. The corals were already stressed in the field before we brought them into these controlled conditions.....but they bleached within a day. Jay wanted to be in control of when they bleached, but they had their own ideas. If your subject is already stressed, it makes it hard to determine what might have created changes in the epigenome of a coral because we were not in control of the stressor that caused the bleaching! Make sense? And we also had issues with other things like problems with controlling water level, wind, etc... So in the end this turned out to be a great pilot experiment that can be better conducted at Shannon Point this summer with anemones instead of coral. The experiment wasn't a waste, however, it was a great learning experiment and Jay still got some data out of it. This is science folks...sometimes experiments work and other times things, like stressed corals, are out of your control and the experiments don't go as planned.

Thankfully Jay had other experiments going on that we were going to finish up during our week-long stay. Last year Jay had taken some coral samples and moved half the colony to the reef right behind Carrie Bow while keeping the other half of the colony at the original collection location (again, all in extremely shallow water). Here is my man driving the boat to one of those sites.

One day when we were feeling especially bad about the election we took a break from science and went out freediving for fun. Found this cool jelly with lots of cute little fishes in the mantle.

Here I am with a Caribbean roughtail stingray

Back to the research.... even though all of Jay's transplanted corals were in super shallow water, the visibility wasn't always great and they could be hard to find after a year of fouling organism growth. Here is an example of the little subsurface buoy tied to a piece of dead coral next to the chunk of coral that was Jay's colony.

  The look of a man who is happy to find his transplanted corals. 

Jay almost always found his corals before I did.... but I found this one (in my hands)

Our trusty boat

Back in the lab each coral had a special photo shoot with the tag (this one is #13) and three rings of color standards. Jay can use photos like these to determine symbiont levels in the coral tissues.

Happy coral collectors in the wet lab

I wasn't kidding when I said you could stand up (which is what I'm doing taking this photo of Jay). This is the reef right behind Carrie Bow where the temperatures are warmer and the transplanted corals may have undergone genetic or epigenetic changes to adjust to the temperature (we don't know yet, that is part of what he is testing right now).

Pretty much the same photo but underwater.... you can see lots of little green blobs, those are actually his corals.

Once you devote some time in your life to a particular creature, you end up loving them wherever you go. That is the case with me and sea cucumbers. I was in love with this turd-shaped sea cucumber immediately. I later learned the common name was.....no shit (pun intended)....the donkey dung sea cucumber. Nuff said. I'm in love.

We spent one night in Dangriga before flying back to America. Through Texas. After the election. This was difficult. But I loved being back in Dangriga....I had traveled around Belize in 2002 by myself and I stopped in Dangriga and Tobacco Cay for a stint. It was fun to be there again, even if we didn't have much time to explore.

Back in Washington we had some much needed time with friends that think like us for Thanksgiving! Ralph and Alana came up to Anacortes and we cooked up a storm! I think our dinner fed all four of us for days.....

Yum! 

And, because we haven't done this for years, we decided to put up a Christmas tree. Who cares that we were gone for most of December? Not me. I've enjoyed having this tree for the two weeks I was around to enjoy it.

Happy holidays everyone!
November photos are here: https://goo.gl/photos/YWL2qoEV5RazPNoc7