Friends hiding in nooks and crannies.

Having friends come to visit me on this rock in the middle of the ocean during this busy time has afforded me the opportunity to spend some moments in the places which make me feel grateful for living here. Instead of running school errands all day, rushing around in my car all over the roads, and dreaming about running school errands at night, and driving my car in my sleep, I run a little bit of errands and then go for short day adventure trips to the recondite natural nooks Aruba has to offer.

Yesterday, for example, Annie, David and I (and Maxi, my beloved cunucu dog) "discovered" a path that goes behind the Balashi Gold Ruins and circles beautifully around the salt flats of Frenchman's Pass where we met 2 of Aruba's most admired endemic species:

The "Infant In Arms", aptly named after swaddled babies of yore, hanging onto the dried vegetation during the hot summer months.



The highly endangered Aruban Rattlesnake, of which we met TWO on our path newly nicknamed "Rattlesnake Alley" or "Risk it". (Considering it's estimated that only around 200 of these snakes exist in the wild, we hit the endangered snake scientist jackpot). We got out of there quickly suspecting that the other 198 relatives of the snakes we saw could possibly be inhabiting this previously untrafficked area.