The week has been so full of adventures that, as I sit here trying to recount the days, I have to keep asking Stacey and Miriam what we did on which day. With their help, here is a rather lengthy account of our adventures in Paradise so far. The weather has been beautiful. It's been chilly a few times, which down here means that the temperature drops into the high 40's at night, but it has been in the 70's and even the 80's most of the time.
Miriam and I are avid bird watchers and while we've been here, we've added quite a few birds to our life lists - ibises, herons, wood storks, egrets, anhingas, pelicans, warblers, kites, and lots of gulls.
Monday afternoon, Miriam and I went down to Marco Island to Tigertail Beach. It was a beautiful beach. There were fewer people there than on Vanderbilt Beach. At Tigertail Beach we had to wade across a lagoon through waist deep water to get to the outer beach. We walked in the surf and collected shells.
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| At Tigertail Beach. |
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| Tigertail Beach. |
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| Through the mangroves to Tigertail Beach. |
That evening, Mr. Rigas treated us to dinner at a Japanese restaurant. His sister Katherine joined us.
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| Out for Japanese food. |
Because she has to take care of Mr. Rigas, Stacey often can't go with Miriam and I on our adventures. Mr. Rigas has a routine of sorts that he likes to follow, but at his own pace. He sleeps late and eats a late breakfast. He likes to go over his email and call his office several times a day. All the things he does require Stacey's assistance to some degree, so she's with him all day. At 95, he can't go hiking through a cypress swamp or spend a day at the beach. We wish Stacey could do more things with us, but knew from the start that she couldn't. Miriam and I appreciate her sacrifice.
On Tuesday we went to the beach down in Katherine's exclusive community, Bay Colony. Miriam and I were on the beach. Mr. Rigas was in the gym in Katherine's building for a bit and then he sat in the sun by the pool for a while. Miriam took a dip in the pool. I didn't. The place where Katherine lives is very nice. In fact Naples is a very ritzy city, at least the part where we are. There are gated communities everywhere. The homes are very expensive. We see lots of expensive cars - Lamborghinis, Bentleys, Maseratis, Ferraris, Jaguars, BMWs, Astin Martins, Mercedes-Benz, and McLarens. This is not the kind of world I live in.
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| The building where Katherine lives. |
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| The beach at Katherine's. |
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| The pool at Katherine's. |
Wednesday morning Miriam and I spent several hours at the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. We walked the boardwalk through a cypress swamp and saw all sorts of birds and plants. The trees are festooned with many different kinds of bromelliads. We saw alligators and snakes and many lizards. We added some new birds to our life lists. It was a warm day and the swamp smelled wonderful, which surprised me. We had to hurry back from the swamp, but our tickets were good for two days, so we went back again on Thursday morning.
It rained on Wednesday night and Thursday was cooler and windier. The swamp was different under cool and cloudy skies. We had no time constraints this time, so we took the long route through the swamp. This time we also saw an otter and many kinds of warblers.
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| On our second day - a painted bunting. |
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| Bromelliads in the trees. |
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| A bromelliad in bloom. |
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| An otter - if you look closely. |
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| There were piliated woodpeckers everywhere. |
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| In the world's oldest cypress swamp. |
When we got back from the swamp, we were supposed to go to the airport to pick up Mr. Rigas 's son Mike, but his flight out of Buffalo was canceled because of snow. It was hard to imagine snow while we sat in subtropical Florida.
On Friday morning, Miriam and I went to a little zoo in Bonito Springs called The Everglades Wonder Garden. It was a bit run down, but a cute place. They had reptiles and birds. We could go into some of the bird cages. We fed ibises and flamingos. Our favorite thing was feeding lorikeets.
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| A white peacock at the Wonder Gardens. |
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| Flamingos and ibises at the Wonder Gardens. |
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| Miriam feeding lorikeets. |
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| Feeding lorikeets. |
In the afternoon, Miriam and I drove up to the airport and picked up Mike. He will be here until Tuesday when he returns to the frozen north.
On Saturday Mr. Rigas and Mike went to lunch with Katherine and that left Stacey free to go on an adventure with Miriam and me. We went to the Naples Zoo. It's a nice little zoo. The day was warm, so many of the animals were sleeping in shade or in their houses, but we saw some exotic and some native animals.
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| At the zoo. |
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| A common gallinule at the zoo. |
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| A spider monkey at the zoo. |
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| A lemur. |
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| Alligators. |
Almost every evening we go to the beach to watch the sunset. Last night we watched it set from Katherine's 15th floor balcony. I don't think I could ever get tired of watching that.
Sunsets on different nights:
There are two different Floridas - the developed one and the wild one. There isn't much of the wild one left. The developed part is pretty impressive, but I'm more impressed and more interested in the wild part. I would have liked to have seen this place before all the development began. Before the swamps were drained and the water channeled. Before the trees were cut. Before all the roads and highways and houses and people moved in. There was once a vast, wet wilderness here, a complex ecosystem teeming with life in a million varieties. Huge flocks of strange and beautiful birds. Swamps that stretched for hundreds of miles full of towering cypress trees, panthers, deer, otters, alligators, frogs, manatees, and lizards. There are only tiny pockets of that wilderness left, isolated fragments that still overwhelm me with their beauty.
I love living in Potter county, but even so, I find myself saying things like "If we lived here - just during the winter months of course - I'd have a garden full of plumaria, gardenias, and jasmine. I would collect bromelliads and orchids. I'd have a lemon tree and a lime tree and an orange tree. I'd grow passionfruit and guavas. " I've realized that many of the plants I grow as houseplants - schefflera, sansevieria, dracena, croton, phalenopsis orchids, and others, grow in people's yards here. I think of the snow and the cold weeks waiting for me at home and I cringe. But then I remember that soon spring will come to Potter county - the sort of spring they don't have here - with crocuses and daffodils and tulips and after that, apple blossom time. It's amazing how different the world is 1,333 miles south of Gold. I guess I'd like to have the best of both worlds.
