AROUND THE ISLAND WITH JOANNE AND JACK
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Starting our trek along the nifty Nafta cliffs to the Toilet Bowl (which is a lot prettier than what it's name sounds like it would be). Press the MAP THIS button above the main photo for a zoomable map of where some of these photos were taken. Also, please notice the "Add Comment" button to your lower left (you may need to scroll up a bit to see it). Feel free to use it. When you add comments, you will be asked if you want to rate the photo. Please feel free to do THAT, too (1 to 5 stars, with 5 being the best). In addition, if you hover your cursor over an open photo, you will see a "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" icon. If you especially like a photo, please click the "thumbs up." If you can't understand why anyone would have taken the photo, click the "thumbs down." Lastly, if you would like to get a closer look at any of the photos, as you hover your mouse over it you will notice sizes listed under the "thumbs down" icon. You can click one of those sizes to bring up a large version. You may have to navigate around to see detail if you click a size which is larger than your screen. Click the enlarged photo once more to bring yourself back to this regular navigation screen.
If all that sounds too complicated, just relax and press your right arrow key to progress to the next photo.
As you can see, Joanne decided to stay up above while Jack and I headed down for the best look.
Best way to watch the video: Click the triangle. That will open a small window and start the video buffering. I find that it works best to wait until it starts playing and then to immediately press PAUSE to allow it to buffer a bit further. This can be a good time to go pour yourself a soda or something. Once you get back, THEN press PLAY and relax with your soda to watch the video. First, you will see the moon and the top of the ridge (where Joanne waited -- well, on the top of the ridge, not on the moon), then Jack exploring a small cave, then you will see the Toilet Bowl. If it starts erratically stopping and then lunging forward, that means you need to press pause again and allow it to buffer a bit more. Total time for the video: 2 minutes and 19 seconds.
Jack climbing out and then along the trail back to our vehicle. Video length: 40 seconds.
2 minutes and 44 seconds of wave spashes! Watch for the rainbow!
This hole is at the top of a large cavern, which also has a huge underwater hole open to the ocean. As waves come and go on the shore, the water in this hole rises and lowers, doing an endless and mesmerizing dance (as you saw in the previous video). The cavern below is called SPOTLIGHT CAVE because, around noon on a cloudless day (when the sun shines directly into this hole), there is a wonderfully-mysterious-looking beam of light which penetrates through the water of the cave to the delight of any lucky SCUBA diver who happens to be beneath (the beam is not something you see from the top here: For that you must be a diver!).
Now to Sirena Cave. If anyone knows the history of this place, please leave comments (see the "Add Comment" button to your lower left). Someone put lots of passion and sweat into landscaping this and preparing it to be a tourist attraction, but then totally abandoned it. There is a large cave behind Sirena.
When I first came here (about 8 years ago) there were still wooden planks on this catwalk. A sign said to keep out of the cave, so I did, but it would have been easily accessible. Now the planks are all rotted and getting into the cave would be a bit of a challenge. In addition to that, I have heard from several folks that organic decomposition inside the cave produces a fairly hefty concentration of gases such as methane. The only people I know who ever did penetrate into it did indeed get ill while they were there, which leads me to believe that the rumors of methane (or some other gas from organic decomposition) are true.
