Laundry day

Today is laundry day, which means bringing my laundry over to the laundromat across the bay and filling washing machines and driers with clothes and quarters. And doing some blogging in between machines.

Yesterday I skipped my daily evening walk and went kayaking instead, around O'Keefe's Island and across to the mangroves in the southern part of Tamil and on to Meqruur. If you have Google Earth installed (and you should), you can check out my route here.

I am a big fan of mangroves. Kayaking among them is very peaceful and relaxing, and they play a major part in the ecosystem of an island like Yap. The way the plants in the mangroves have adapted to the hostile environment is also fascinating. The cone-shaped things sticking out of the water in the picture to the right are the roots of one type of mangrove tree - Sonneratia - which acts as the lungs of the tree, providing oxygen from the air.

The next time I will try to remember to put on some mosquito repellent though...

On my daily walk the day before yesterday I crossed paths with an adolescent Coconut crab. While you see mangrove crabs all the time in Yap, seeing the Coconut ones is a much rarer occurrence. Coconut crabs are the largest land living crabs, and they make quite a nice meal... unfortunately so nice that it is getting harder and harder to find a mature one. Correction - the crab in my photo is actually an Indonesian hermit crab, not a juvenile Coconut crab.