The Townmonkeys meet the Green Monkeys

We're busy, going from one beach to another, now from one island to the next. We're now on St Lucia.
But first let me tell you about the Barbados Nature Reserve. On the way there we got lost - of course. It seems the only way on getting anywhere on a Caribbean Island.
So after a few detours and surprises, like hidden signs, hidden entrances and plain mistakes on our map we made it to the Reserve. Where we promptly ended up at the wrong attraction, the signal station which is on the other end of the parking lot. But hey, they have monkeys there. They seem to wander around and only come back for their lunch to the reserve.
There are lots of tortoises at the reserve who wander around in search for excitement or better said food. For some reason Little Monkey was petrified of them. He would only walk in a wide pert around them. Tricky as the little paths were very narrow. There were a few little deer and some rabbit like animal, a mara. We didn't see any more monkeys until it was time for the feeding.
At first there were only masses of tortoises and a few deer munching on the coconut halves and fruit. But then the monkeys came to have their share. The monkeys aren't indigenous, they have been brought in a long time ago and now run around in the wild and in the reserve where they come and go as they please. The farmers aren't too happy about them as they ruin the crops.



Here you can see the tortoises in the background, the monkeys simply walk over their backs and at times snatch the coconuts right from under their noses.


My monkeys loved wandering around and spotting animals, and even though Little Monkey was scared of the wandering tortoises, he loved pointing them out particularly when they weren't too close. Obviously. One of the tortoises stepped on Big Monkey's toes and wandered over her foot. "oooh Dad", she said thinking it was Daddy Monkey.


While Little Monkey was scared of the tortoises to the point that he screamed whenever one came near, he wasn't scared of the monkeys, he thought them very funny. Obviously a connection going on here...


There are also a few parrots and Big Monkey spent a long time chatting to one of them which every time she said hello, swirled around. It, too got some lunch and Big Monkey took great pleasure in commenting every bite it took, in between of saying hello.

Love

Little Monkey climbed onto my lap and said, "Mummy, I wav you. I waaav you." awww, one Mummy had a melted heart yesterday.

Feeling hot...

It's really hot here as you would expect. But somehow I've forgotten how hot it can be in January when you just fly far enough. I think it's weird, January is all about being cold... Well,normally. Now it's all about trying to find a cool spot, a cold drink, maybe some ice cream and avoiding poisonous trees (who came up with that?).

Monday we actually did some serious sight seeing, we visited Andromeda Botanical Gardens. Well, we wanted to have some lunch and that's where we ended up. The kids liked it here so we had a wander around afterwards.



This was really neat with lovely plants like the ones we normally only have indoors. Yes, palm trees too. Palm trees rock. ahem. Right, photos of pretty plants:





The Monkeys had a fab time and enjoyed walking around finding red signs that showed our route.

For Mrs Wookie

This is for Mrs Wookie because there are many, many palm trees here. And a holiday without a palm tree picture is not complete, right? Right of course...

Pool time

Barbados

After all the snow we had recently Daddy Monkey insisted on some heat and booked us a holiday in the Caribbean. On New Year's Eve we took off from the cold and arrived 8 hours later in the sun.

But first there was the flight to manage, Little Monkey thought the plane looked too scare and he insisted we should go on a little plane. He did well once we were in the air but indulged in two of his favourite activities which are going to the toilet and opening doors. He didn't, however, actually use the toilet - scary noise, you see, well at least not all the time at least - he just enjoyed to go in and shudder at the thought of the noise that might happen.


He only stopped when he got an ipod to play with and Big Monkey took a break from watching TV or playing with the Nanny Monkey. Luckily the plane was not full and we had lots of space and nobody complained about us wandering up and down and checking out the state of the amenities.

Picture the holidays - Bokeh

Today's prompt was to play with bokeh, I've never done that before but I like the results. The first two pictures are our Christmas Tree and the third one is the street light down the road.