Feather day

Friday, March 20, 2009

At breakfast, Ingo tested the second half of Torsten’s hypothesis and found that, yes, birds did indeed like to eat bacon. Torsten was also excited to see tiny millipedes crawling around the paths, although he refers to them as “antipedes”. Then, after breakfast, we saw someone with “Animal Park” on his shirt sitting outside smoking, with two brightly coloured parrots sitting on the wall next to him. Naturally, we stopped to look, and as we watched the parrots preening, a small blue feather came off. Although the man wasn’t allowing any photographs to be taken (they usually go around with a professional photographer who then makes the photos available for sale later), he didn’t care if we took the feather – so now we have a parrot feather for a souvenir.

Since we had spent all morning yesterday at the Kids’ Club, and since I really wanted to get into the pool, we changed our clothes and strolled down to the pool. While Ingo searched for a floating mat, Torsten and I played with a green pool noodle. It started to rain a bit, and I was amused to see that most people packed up and went for cover – seemed odd, as they were all wearing bathing suits and hanging around by the pool! However, we stayed by the pool, and the rain passed fairly quickly. Ingo came back with a floating mat, and we pushed Torsten around the pool a bit. At one point, he overreached with the noodle on the mat and fell in, but we quickly pulled him out and dried his face, and he was none the worse for wear. As it remained a bit cloudy, though, we decided to change into dry clothes, since Torsten was getting somewhat chilly.

By the time we had changed, the sun was out again. We walked down to the Kids’ Club, pausing along the way to look at the flamingoes. They were preening as well, and Ingo managed to snag a flamingo feather to go with our parrot feather! At the Kids’ Club, Torsten played briefly with Austin and Sophia, then looking at my watch, I saw that it was time to get back to meet Glenn for lunch, so we cut his playtime short and dragged him back to the World Café. Throughout lunch, he kept yawning, so we made it quick and whisked him back to the room for a nap. I think he’s beginning to miss some of the things that we have at home – all his toys and so on – as he now occasionally says that he wants to go back home (actually, saying “want to go back to new home”).

While Torsten and I napped, Ingo went down to the beach to see if he could do some snorkeling. When he’d checked the flag in the morning, it was yellow, indicating “Swim with caution – unstable ocean conditions”, so he thought he’d be fine. He went out, and described it as snorkeling in the jet stream – he really had to fight the current to get back, and visibility was between 4 – 6 feet. There were apparently some nice corals and fish, but he was whisked past them pretty fast. One good thing was that the current was so strong that the fish had no time to get out of the way before he was on top of them! He didn’t stay out too long before deciding that it was ridiculous to try to snorkel in those conditions, and swam back to shore. That was when he saw that the flag was red – indicating “Prohibited to enter the ocean – dangerous currents”. He came back to the room to tell me all this, and said that he wouldn’t go in again unless the flag was green (Ocean calm). Unfortunately, we’ve never seen a green flag – the best we’ve seen is yellow – so he may not get any snorkeling at all this trip (I don’t think that I will at all, even with a green flag, given his description)!

Torsten woke up with about an hour and a half to spare before dinner, so we took a walk. There were no less than three bridal parties around the resort! I have a feeling that this resort does a brisk business in weddings, and I can really see why. It’s a lovely setting, and has all the right amenities (the drawback, of course, is that it’s a bit far from anything else – like airports). We made our way down to the beach, where Torsten was slightly disappointed because the Kids’ Club was closed, but he was quickly consoled, as Austin, Sophia and their families were playing on the beach with a ball. He and Austin had a run-along-the-sand-and-fall-down game, and then everyone watched the funny beach competition going on, as they brought out 2 burros and had people race them. As this was going on, I was peacefully sitting in a deck chair, listening to an audio course on the elements and origins of jazz, and looking at the ocean, the blue sky, and the waving palm trees. It really felt decadent.

Eventually, everyone decided to go their separate ways – Austin and Sophia were leaving the next day, which was a pity, but there will be other children for Torsten to play with. We meandered up to meet Glenn, and had our usual nice dinner at the World Café. While we were eating, one of the male dancers came to our table to tell us to go see the entertainment that night, and actually greeted Glenn by name! Glenn certainly gets around. He finished his dinner, and went to see if Sonya was back from the excursion that she’d gone on that day. Turns out that Sonya lives in Toronto, so I asked if he planned to keep in touch with her. He replied, “Well, I don’t know, her mother won’t let her go on Facebook”. I decided not to mention that there WERE other methods of keeping in touch other than Facebook.

After we finished dinner, we followed Torsten, who went racing along the paths back to our room. There he sat, like a little couch potato, watching TV until it was time to go to bed. We’re really beginning to like the Backyardigans, and can’t wait to see what it’s like in English!