Around and about

It's been a while since I posted, I know, but that's what happens when there's banding to do - we get home, hot and tired, and the last thing I want to do is sit down and compose a long description of everything I was just doing. But! Now it's the weekend. Recall, banding weeks in MAPS protocol are ten days long - six days of banding, and four days off, because if it rains one day we need a long buffer period to be able to push into so we can stay on schedule. Anyway, we used one of our off days earlier in the week because Dan wasn't feeling well, but that still leaves us with a three-day weekend of Tuesday through Thursday.

So yesterday (Tuesday), we did some exploring. First, lunch at Saigon Kitchen, a Vietnamese and Chinese restaurant with $5 lunch specials - can't beat that, really. $5 got me a delicious bun topped with barbecued beef and spring rolls, a spicy bean sprout salad, a cup of egg drop soup, and watermelon for dessert (if only I wasn't allergic - it seems to be a popular dessert item at restaurants here). Then we went on to Lake Susupe, which is remarkably well-hidden for a decently-sized lake on a small island. Only one road goes out to it, and that road gives no indication of ending up at a lake, so the few times we'd tried to get to it without seeking a map for directions, we'd ended up driving circles around it without ever actually seeing it. There is a small bamboo and wood pier at one end, which, oddly, starts in someone's yard - and they've posted a sign with a disclaimer stating that any injuries are not the responsibility of the landowner. Injuries? What?

Well, it turns out, the pier is in some serious disrepair, with major sections rotting away and entire areas blocked off with yellow caution tape where the decay had resulted in completely impassable holes. It was all easy enough to avoid, but suddenly the warning made a lot of sense. Once we'd had enough of the view from the pier, we started off on a little trail that circles the lake. There were turtles of some sort, although they were too far away to get a good look at them and they dove into the water before we could get close. Also found here were Yellow Bitterns and Mariana Moorhens, an endangered subspecies of the Common Moorhen (it is estimated that only 30-40 exist on Saipan, and we saw five).

From there it was on to Tank Beach on the east side of the island, which despite its name, has no tanks. Maybe it did once. It does still have several pillboxes, however, built under cliff overhangs with limestone blocks so as to look like part of the cliff itself from a distance. The east side has much rougher surf than the west, which is probably why the beach is lined with limestone cliffs and overhangs rather than gently sloping up as it does on the other side of the island. It makes for some very dramatic scenery, certainly. We wandered around here and explored the few shallow tidepools, where we found tons and tons of sea cucumbers, anemones, some tiny bright blue fish, and an endless supply of hermit crabs.

It was starting to get late at that point, so we headed back to the house for a bit, then went back out to go find the beach where the tanks actually are - Kilili Beach, also known as Invasion Beach, for obvious reasons. Two US tanks remain stranded there, making for an impressive sight at sunset. After that it was market time, which is always fun. For $6 I got a loaf of bread for sandwiches, two barbecued chicken legs (thigh and drumstick on each) for adding meat to dinners, a huge and beautiful bunch of kangkong (local leaf vegetable which is apparently similar to spinach, I have yet to try it), and a cup of sweet potato and coconut soup for dinner. Add to that the vegetables I still have from last week and the things I have in the cupboard, and I'm basically set for groceries for a while, though I know we'll go to the Thursday market and probably the Taste of the Marianas festival on Saturday, which will mean $5 meals at each of those. Also, I bought a dozen eggs from a local farm the other day, and that was $3.25, a dollar more than buying eggs imported from the mainland but I thought it was worth it. So, a week of groceries and dinners out a couple times for under $20. How insane is that? Initially it seemed like food was so expensive here, and it can be still if you buy occasional dairy products (I do like having milk available, even if it's $5 for a half-gallon) or other imported goods, but if you stick to local produce, harvest the free fruit that's all over, and eat far more vegetables and a lot less meat, it's extremely cheap to live here.

Rather than repeat myself several times over, I'm going to point you all to my flickr set for even more information, as everything from that praying mantis (row 3, column 4) and onward was uploaded over the last day or two, and most of the images, particularly those of the birds, have extensive captions. If there's something you think I didn't cover well or have questions about anyway, go ahead and ask in the comments and I'll reply in my next post.