PV - Thurs, 3 Jan 2013

One coconut 5 minutes off the tree.

Less coconut meat than one would expect from this biggie.

I woke up this morning to the sound--and smell of the mosquitoe/bug fogger going full blast. The guy wears a heavy duty mask...what about the rest of us?

It brought back a memory that made me smile, and grimmace! When we were kids living in married quarters (PMQs) in Edmonton, spring was the time for spraying for mosquitoes. A truck would drive through the PMQs pulling a wagon with a huge tank of repellant. A motor on the tank created this huge fog that drifted all through the area. God only knows what it was...DDT?...but as the truck slowly drove down the street, all the kids would drive behind it on their bikes, breathing in that stuff. Nobody stopped us or told us it might not be good for us. We only stopped when the truck went off our street and we knew we weren't allowed to take our bikes any further. Hmmm...probably explains a lot of things.

It was cloudy again today but nice and warm and we watched the coconut harvesting for a while. Wayne bought one from the guys for 20 pesos ($1.60) and they cracked it open for him. I've only eaten the processed hard coconut in those little brown ones we get at home but it's not what comes down from the tree! The large 'raw' green ones 5 minutes from the tree are filled with about 2 cups of clear liquid. It's mildly sweet...kind of bland really...but supposedly healthy. The surprise for me was that the coconut is very soft--sort of reminded me of the consistency of fish fillets once we scooped it out--and again, mildly sweet but nothing like the final coconut we eat.

We decided to take our air mattresses down by the sea wall and see if there were any whales. Sure enough, we saw a couple of them (you just have to find the various whale watching boats and the whales are close by). We'll wait for Gail and Graham to come and go out--even if we don't see whales (which would be unusual) it's a nice afternoon out on the bay. The boats are very careful not to crowd the whales and most of them have a biologist on board to make sure they aren't harassed. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for f'n people renting ski jets. We counted 8 of them speeding near the area the whales were surfacing. There are no water police patrols and I doubt that the ski jet rental people are too concerned about whether or not their patrons take the calving whales into consideration.

The sun came out in full force around 4 pm but it was a very pleasant day regardless. Tomorrow is going to be haircut day for me...sorry Danny...but it's just that 1/4 inch too long that makes it a frizzy mess despite gel, spray, or anything else. I only get it trimmed and judging from past experience, a hairdresser is a hairdresser is a hairdresser. Besides, it grows fast.