Chili Ramoras
Today was the annual VI Texas Chili cook-off. Held at the Bolango Bay resort, it is a chili contest/beach party. The best chili maker gets to go to Texas for the national chili cook-off in November. $10 gets you 30 tickets, each ticket is redeemable for a small sample of chili (4 is good for a bowl) from any of the contestants. Kendra and I spent about an hour and a half at the cook-off, sampling chili. We also ran into Rueben and Heather, a couple of nice folks who we originally met when we went to St. John last weekend. We didn’t have a dollar to pay them back for the buck that we borrowed from them on St. John, but we did give them our last chili tasting ticket.
After the chili cook-off we headed to the opposite end of the island to try out a new beach, Coki Bay, which is right next to an attraction we need to try out, Coral World. The water at Coki bay was great; it was like a big swimming pool. There were many fish, ranging from the menacing (see below) to very small and harmless. There were also a few sea urchins, but they stayed in the rocks, away from tender feet. Now for the menacing fish… we swam straight out, about ½ to the swim buoy, when we saw a fish that was pretty big (~3½ ft long), and a bit sinister looking. It was the first time that I had ever seen a remora, which looked a bit like this one. The weird thing about it was that it kept coming really close to us. Kendra thought it was looking for a quick bite, and I thought it might be looking for a ride. Remoras usually attach themselves to sharks via a suction area on the head, seen in this picture. They feed off of what the shark doesn’t get, so they are definitely more of a scavenger than a predator. One website I found said that they are also very inquisitive, which explains its very forward behavior (it even followed us into the shallows were 10 or so people were. It was quite amusing watching people jump when they first saw the remora).
Well, its off to Kmart/Officemax to get some high quality surge suppressors… power went out twice again last night.
After the chili cook-off we headed to the opposite end of the island to try out a new beach, Coki Bay, which is right next to an attraction we need to try out, Coral World. The water at Coki bay was great; it was like a big swimming pool. There were many fish, ranging from the menacing (see below) to very small and harmless. There were also a few sea urchins, but they stayed in the rocks, away from tender feet. Now for the menacing fish… we swam straight out, about ½ to the swim buoy, when we saw a fish that was pretty big (~3½ ft long), and a bit sinister looking. It was the first time that I had ever seen a remora, which looked a bit like this one. The weird thing about it was that it kept coming really close to us. Kendra thought it was looking for a quick bite, and I thought it might be looking for a ride. Remoras usually attach themselves to sharks via a suction area on the head, seen in this picture. They feed off of what the shark doesn’t get, so they are definitely more of a scavenger than a predator. One website I found said that they are also very inquisitive, which explains its very forward behavior (it even followed us into the shallows were 10 or so people were. It was quite amusing watching people jump when they first saw the remora).
Well, its off to Kmart/Officemax to get some high quality surge suppressors… power went out twice again last night.
posted by Dave at 5:15 PM
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