Saving the Turtles with Gumbo Limbo

My nephew (the most adorable child in the world, although I may be a bit biased, as he's my nephew) turned one this weekend, so I've been in Florida to visit my sister and her family for his birthday party. Apparently, its a tradition in Jamaica (where my brother-in-law was born) for the father to smash cake into his kid's face on their first birthday (just the first birthday, not any of the rest of them). I rather think that my nephew would have ended up with cake all over his face anyway, as he's not the neatest eater (nor is any child of that age), but it was still funny to watch my brother-in-law shove cake into his face and then my sister try to clean him up as best she could in a sprinkler. I have got pictures of this, but I won't be posting any per my sister's request.

The next day, after everyone had a chance to rest up a bit (we were all knackered after the party), my sisters and I took my nephew to a sea turtle rescue place called Gumbo Limbo in Boca Raton. Technically it's the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, but they're best known for the sea turtle rescue and rehabilitation.

Right outside, there are several stone turtles of varying species that you can pose with for photos. They were a bit sandy and wet when we were there because of the on and off stormy weather that we'd been having since I arrived, so we had the turtles to ourselves (after we wiped them down). 

The outdoor area (which was most of the place) was closed at first due to lightning strikes in the area, so the entry building was rather crowded. There were quite a few kids there, several playing with interactive exhibits and one crying in Spanish to his parents about wanting to see butterflies. We headed to the gift shop for something to do, which ended up being a good thing, because my sister found a book she wanted for my nephew (about a narwhal who loved music but was actually rather bad at it and was therefore jealous of the other sea creatures, at least until he learnt to find something that he could be good at - conducting everyone else in an orchestra). 

Shortly afterwards, they announced that the lightning strikes were no longer a threat and that we were free to explore the rest of the nature centre. So we headed outside and then down a path to an area with several tanks, each with a turtle in it. Each one had been injured (mostly by fishing nets) and then rescued and rehabilitated by Gumbo Limbo. They had names, usually with some kind of theme (there was Violet of the flowers theme, and Buckbeak and Crookshanks of the Harry Potter theme) and signs describing what their injuries had been, how they were recovering, and when they could be expected to be released back into the ocean. There's one turtle who has actually been a repeat customer of Gumbo Limbo - she apparently likes to hang round the pier and therefore keeps getting caught in fishing nets. She's been at the centre three or four times already, although she'd been re-released to the ocean by the time I visited.

The employees were incredibly knowledgeable and really cared about the work they were doing. We spoke with one next to a tank of baby turtles that hadn't made it out of their nest and would have died if the centre hadn't rescued them. He told us all about the plans for releasing them into the wild as soon as they were strong enough to survive on their own. I thought it was wonderful that they were able to rescue so many, as the number of baby turtles that makes it to the ocean is generally very small. 

They had the baby turtles separated into different sections of the tank based on how strong they were and how well they were eating, so that the stronger ones wouldn't take food at the expense of their weaker siblings. There was even a little white one, although we were told that it was leucistic, not albino, as the turtle hadn't got red eyes. Leucism involves reduced pigmentation, usually with normal pigmentation in the eyes, while albinism is a complete absence of pigmentation and red eyes.

While Gumbo Limbo is best known for its work with turtle rehabilitation, the centre has also got a boardwalk through the woods (palm trees and other tropical plants), aquariums filled with fish and other sea creatures (including sting rays, which my sister and her family have a mild obsession with - my nephew was particularly taken with them), and the butterfly garden that the child had been crying about when we'd first arrived.

There weren't actually many butterflies out when we were there - a few monarch butterflies and one bright yellow one - and the ones we did see were flying around so that I couldn't get a good picture of any of them. I can imagine that it's lovely when more butterflies are out. It didn't take long to walk round the entire place (which was good, as my nephew as due for a nap shortly after we left), but I could easily have taken much longer with the turtles that were recovering and awaiting release.

The nature centre seeks out turtles in need of help, takes them in, and then releases them back to the wild when they're ready. You can actually adopt a turtle if you'd like to help the conservation efforts - ($50.00 for a turtle and $25.00 for a hatchling) and all proceeds go towards conservation and rehabilitation. I see online all the time news reports of turtles who get injured from straws and plastic rings from fizzy drinks, not to mention the fishing nets that injured most of the turtles at Gumbo Limbo, so it was really nice to see what was being done to help them. Since so much of the modern world harms other creatures, including the turtles, it's important to do everything we can to protect them.

What Not to Forget When You Travel

Packing for a trip can be tricky. You have to decide what you need and make sure you don't forget anything. I have a checklist saved on my phone that I go through every time I travel so I can make sure I don't forget the essentials.

However, the essentials may be fewer than you'd think. My list of absolute essentials consists of:

• Passport
• Wallet
• Phone
• Kindle
• Camera/GoPro
• Chromebook

And that's about it.

My full to-pack list is obviously much larger than that, but those are the things that I consider to be irreplaceable. I can't just get myself a new passport when I arrive, but if I've somehow forgot to pack any socks at all, I can run to a shop and buy some. Most of what's on my absolute essentials list are there because they're prohibitively expensive to replace or because I can't replace what's on them easily (like my contacts on my phone).

If I forget shampoo, the hotel will have it. If I forget to change money, I can use my credit card or an ATM when I arrive (even if there is a small fee). If I forget clothes, or my phone charger, there are shops there that would be happy to sell me whatever I forgot. Of course, anything I had to buy while there would come out of my souvenir budget, and so far that's been good enough incentive to not forget anything I couldn't do without.

Your list of absolute essentials for a trip may differ from mine, but I find it helpful (and much less stressful to) to have a shorter list of the things I absolutely have to keep mental track of and then a much longer list of everything else I need to pack that I don't need to worry about so much. It definitely helps me start out a trip on a better note!

Panda Quest

My boyfriend and I are on a quest. The goal is simple - to see pandas. Until we can take a trip to China to see the Panda Kindergarten at the Chengdu Panda Base, we'll have to settle for seeing as many at zoos as we can.

The Ueno Zoo in Tokyo had pandas when I was there, but my time living in Japan predated my interest in pandas, so I never made the time to see them. Because I missed out on the Tokyo pandas, we've been trying to make up for it by seeing all of the ones we can. Since we currently live in North America, that's where we've started.

Last year, my boyfriend and I went to Washington, D.C. and, naturally, at the top of our itinerary was the National Zoo, to see the pandas. The National Zoo actually has got a fantastic panda cam and I'd been watching it when Bei Bei, the then-cub was born. By the time I visited, the tiny baby panda that I'd seen learn to walk and climb trees was as big as his mother.

The entire zoo was lovely - it was entirely free, the only charge was if you wanted to purchase a map, which we did - the zoo is not so confusing that you can't get round without one, but it was nice to have and the proceeds went to support the zoo.

This wasn't my first time seeing pandas in person - I saw them first in San Diego, but I'm never going to complain about seeing more. They're adorable and I'm so glad that they're finally off the endangered species list. They're still vulnerable, but that downgrade from endangered is thanks to all of the hard work and time put in by people who truly care about them. Hopefully we'll see a return of pandas to the wild someday as well.

I promise there are pandas in the photo with me - they're in the shade, trying to escape as much of the early autumn heat as they can.

Learning a Language for Travel

With English now such a global language, should you bother learning a language for travel? My answer to this question is always 'yes, absolutely', but I love languages (I speak six, although I'm only truly fluent in English) and learning them, so I may be a bit biased. Sometimes it's just not possible to learn an entire language for a week-long trip. But while learning the local language may not be necessary to have a great trip, it can make things a lot more fun.

Some of my favourite experiences travelling have only occurred because I spoke the language. I lived in Japan for several years after university and got to meet some wonderful people there that I never would have been able to talk to without knowing Japanese. The train conductor in Nikko who was so excited to have foreigners on his train that he wanted to take a picture with us. The elderly couple hiking a mountain with their cat in a sling who helped us find our way back to the path we needed. Another elderly couple out hiking who gave use cookies because we were foreign and had travelled all this way to visit their country. The Hiroshima bombing survivor who wrote the memorial poem on a monument that we'd been admiring and who told us stories about the war and about not being able to use English terms in baseball. Only that last conversation had any English at all and that was because I was translating for my mum and aunt.

I've since moved back home and now go with my boyfriend on big international trips - big because of the length and the number of places we visit, not because of how war away we go. Some of our 'big' trips have been rather close to home. Our last trip was to Scandinavia (with a quick day trip to Tallinn). Since there wasn't going to be any way that I could learn Finnish, Estonian, Swedish, and Norwegian all before the trip, this ended up being the first time in my life I'd been to another country without knowing its language first.

I was able to pick up a few words here and there as we travelled, but for the most part had to use exclusively English. Fortunately, nearly everyone everywhere we went spoke excellent English and when they didn't, the interaction didn't really require much speaking (such as buying my new favourite skagen sandwich at a convenience store). This experience really just made me want to learn all four languages more - if I hear a language a lot, I want to learn it so I can understand it. I ended up learning Japanese at university because a friend got me started watching anime. I started teaching myself Korean for similar reasons (Korean dramas) even before I met my boyfriend (whose parents were both born in South Korea).

Now that I've got personal experience with both options, I think I still prefer making sure I know at least some of the language beforehand. Sure, it's easier to rely on English, since so many people speak it across the world, but I find it to be a courtesy to at least try to speak the local language, even if it's only a few phrases. It feels wrong to me to go somewhere else and then make them accommodate me and my inability to speak their language. Even just trying to read a phrase from a guide book can go along way towards people appreciating your efforts, even if they have to speak English with you anyway.

Spring Tulips

Now that the weather has finally turned warmer and it's spring in more than just name only, I went with my mum to the Holland Tulip Festival in Holland, Michigan. Of course, it was a gloomy day, with cloudy skies threatening rain, but I thought this was fine - I like the rain, it wasn't too hot, and I didn't get sunburnt. And it didn't actually end up raining, so it all worked out in the end.

Holland, as its name implies, was founded by Dutch Americans (in 1847) who emigrated from the Netherlands fleeing poor economic conditions and seeking religious freedom. Today, there's still a large population of people with Dutch ancestry and the town celebrates that heritage every year with the Tulip Festival and other Dutch-themed attractions that bring in loads of tourists.

It was rather appropriate that I was with my mum, as it was actually Mother's Day in the US the day we went. It was lovely to have the day to spend with her. Since we don't live in the same place, having that kind of mother/daughter time isn't possible as often as I would like.

Obviously the main thing I wanted to see was the tulips. The city has tulips planted all over, so you can see them any time when they're blooming. They line the streets and there's a park in the centre of town where there are loads of different colours and varieties planted all in the same place.

The flowers were lovely. I don't know a lot about them, so their names didn't mean anything to me, but it was nice seeing all of the different kinds. While we were eating lunch (traditional Dutch food, including croquettes, which I'd tried before in Japan, but had never known their origin), there was a speaker talking about how to properly care for the flowers. My mum has much more of a green thumb than I do (I tend to kill plants - except my lucky bamboo, which I've actually managed to keep alive so far), so it was more practical information for her, but still interesting to listen to. I never knew so much went in to caring for plants (probably why I am not good with them).

Tulips weren't the only part of the festival. There were stalls selling Dutch food and souvenirs, a windmill park, a Dutch village (for children), and a parade. People dressed up in traditional Dutch costume, including wooden shoes. There was even a band performing in the parade that marched in clogs.

Now I need to go to the Netherlands. My mum's been there with my dad, but I've not been yet. The Netherlands is actually my first stop on a trip with my boyfriend this autumn, but since the tulips are a spring flower we won't be able to see them in Europe, so it was nice that I still got to see them this year with my mum, a little bit closer to home.