Our vacation from our vacation. We needed a break. Okay, your chuckles aside, we needed to stay put and just relax and enjoy doing a little bit nothing. We’d read and heard that the Colombian island of Providencia just off the coast of Honduras was a great place to do just that. While there we enjoyed the island life, renting a scooter and checking out some of the snorkel spots, taking a drive during midday for a break from the heat. Suffering from a cold and therefore limited to snorkeling, Denise couldn’t join me for a couple of fantastic scuba dives where I faced my lifelong fear of “Jaws” and swam with the sharks. Even if they were just little biddy 4’ reef sharks. Six of them at least!

We even did our bit to help save the planet. It was the beginning of the rainy season, which coincides with the beginning of the black crab migration where all the little critters scramble for the ocean to lay their eggs. The problem was the only road that went around the island was right in the crabs’ path so many got squished by the cars and scooters despite the government shutting the road down for a month at night to allow for safer navigation. We had heard that some of the younger folks enjoyed hearing the little crunch as they drove over the scrambling crabs. Horribly offended we took it upon ourselves to drive around shining our light looking for some wayward crabs. Using two long sticks we were able to half chase, half carry them across the road to safety. We must have saved a whole bunch, with at least ten or twelve of these little guys now able to dip their toes in the ocean. Do-gooder duty done, we can go back to the Pacific Northwest with our pride intact! Check out this video about the migration.

There was an apparently endemic peculiarity to this island and one for which I half expected to see some of my old high school buddies thriving on the island. Joe? Old Milwaukee, the beer, was in all the grocery stores and competed favorably with other imported beers. It was available in both six-packs as well as the more traditional, if I remember high school correctly, twenty-four pack cases. Having had one, I think I’ve graduated.

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