corset17 7 years, 11 months ago.This will be my first attempt at pictures using photobucket and it may get ugly. Here is my first picture – butterflies were everywhere on the island. Apparently post Paloma, lot of plants, vines, trees, etc were blooming – some the locals hadn’t seen bloom for years.
This is at the airport, and there are several butterflies feeding on this flowering bush.
Let’s see how this one works out before I try the rest of the photos.
cheers,
Joy
Overall, we had a great trip and even managed to track down Brakker and Bonnie, although buying fresh fish eluded us. We had a great lunch with them and took a look at some of the damage around their place. Repairs are happening, but slowly.
The island looks very different this time, the green lushness is gone (temporarily) and there is still a lot of debris around. There were roadside crews working daily to pick up garbage and debris from the bushes at the side of the road. Everywhere, construction crews were working on repairs. I really can’t imagine how the island must have looked immediately after the hurricane.
All around, trees that were snapped off almost at their bases, were beginning to sprout new growth. This seemingly dead looking branch was shooting nice new foliage out.
Although these huge trees at the government administration building were not broken completely, it will probably take some time to grow all the branches back. I wish I had a before picture to compare with.
Many of the homeowners and business owners looked really exhausted, and when you talked to them, they are still in major recovery mode. I think it is just about impossible for anyone who didn’t live through Paloma or another brutal storm like it to really comprehend what people have gone through. Although no-one was directly killed in the storm, one of our close friends has lost 3 siblings in the 3 short months after Paloma – so I guess the stress of it all takes its toll one way or another.
There were very choppy seas almost everyday while we were there, so the food barge was a bit delayed. It’s lucky there are several grocery stores on the island, because after making the rounds, we found everything we were looking for. We also brought some food from home that we thought might be hard to find.
Most of our days were spent hacking our way through the bushes and fallen trees on our property to try and mark a boundary line. The beach time and down time visiting with friends was really appreciated.
Most of my pictures center around the recovery of the flora and fauna of Cayman Brac.
This is a flowering vine I found in the bushes, unfortunately, I’m not much of a botanist and don’t know the name.
Here is a sunset on the Northside from a friend’s deck.
This little gecko was out one night, and I was shooting into pitch dark to get him. Not sure if his spots will show up or not.
Great camouflage with this lizard. He was hard to see, and I could only find him when he moved. He’s tiny, only a couple of inches long.
More flowering trees.
Lastly, we rescued this palm tree at the edge of our property using brute force to erect it and heavy cord to tie it to sea grape. I had no idea coconut palm trees were so heavy, but they are. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the cords hold until the roots can re-establish themselves.
If you visit the Brac now, make sure you go again in a couple years to see the utter transformation.
cheers,
Joy
We’re glad you got back to that far-away place you call home. Traveling that far would have been unpleasant for me…. but not for Bonnie. She loves to travel! Enjoyed your pictures. Wish I could supply names to the plants but haven’t been here long enough to learn the names…. and probably will never know (or remember) most of them. Those trees at the admin building were Norfolk Island pines… not native and not widely grown here. There was another nicely-shaped one with the two pictured which was decorated for Christmas every year but it was lost during the storm.
We’re glad that you are interested in ecology and preservation of the island plants, etc. and look forward to seeing you again. Perhaps we can hike some of the trails and do some exploring….. if you can tear away from your land clean-up! That’s a nice piece of land you have but it ‘s going to take some work to get it like you want it (as if you didn’t know!) We went on the Salt Water Pond Trail last month and cleared some of the downed trees from Paloma, and Bonnie happened to take a picture of one of those little red-flowered vines, same as you posted. Haven’t found out what it is but will keep trying. Also found a manchineel blown across the trail. Be wary of any you might find while clearing your property! They are very toxic.
