Day 173 – May 4th

What a fun, relaxing, exhausting day!
While waiting for breakfast, I saw some awesome birds! I saw a big brown hawk, sunning himself with wings spread, and a smaller bird looking for his breakfast. He had a vibrantly orange beak, but looked to be plain otherwise, with a white chest and neck, and mostly black wings. Then he dove down from his perch, after some breakfast. And I was in awe – his back and wingtips we electric blue! He was so beautiful! I was mesmerized as he flew from perch to perch, with his lovely ocean backdrop. It was all so wonderful.
On the beach, we started back in the tidal pool, but as the tide moved in rather quickly, we moved onto sandcastle making. Nandry and I fell to it, and Boaz later joined us. We worked on a moat and barrier wall, naively thinking that we could hold back the sea from our castle to be. We took a break, leaving that part of the beach for a bit, and our efforts were all for naught – the waves flattened our barriers and filled in our moat. At Limbe beach, the tides are pretty drastic. I will post pictures of low and high tide, but know it is like two different beaches! So the water eventually goes all the way up to the rocks near the trees at the top of the beach (it would be like the ocean in JAX going all the way up to the dunes).
During our break, I took a little rest in our lovely air conditioned room. Yes, we enjoyed AC for a few days, and it was wonderful, especially when coming off the steamy tropical beach in the middle of the day!
Later that evening, after a yummy dinner of (of course) seafood, we went on a moonlit walk on the beach, and we ran into...CRABS! Tons of them! And many we as large as my hand! The boys, of course, immediately gave chase, and managed to catch a couple in a container they found. Those crabs were tough and feisty, and had sharp barbs all over them! I tried unsuccessfully to pick one up, but I did manage to get some GREAT pictures of our little friends. We later asked if the locals eat them, because they are so big, but we didn’t end up getting a straight answer on that. And we eventually let ours go.