St. Lucia

St.Lucia is located aside a broad estuary, called Lake St. Lucia. The lake itself is salty, about 200 square kilometres, and home to hundreds of snappy-fish (or "crocodiles" as they call them here), and bubble-cows (or "hippopotamus", as they call them here). There are stories of bubble-cows wandering through town at night, but we only ran into some random ungulates.

To see the actual bubble-cows, we went on a boat trip up the lake. There were several breeding pods floating about. A pod generally involves one bad-ass male and as many females as he could handle. Young males are kept away, or the dominant male will see him as a threat, so there are some solitary males and females with male calves.

This pod was a couple of females with nursing young.

We also saw a rare example of snappy-fish and bubble-cow interacting. In this case, the young croc

was taking advantage of the general slovency of the hippo, by hanging out on his back, taking the occasional nip, and sucking up any blood it could free. What a jerk The bubble-cow seemed bored.

But still, hard to feel sorry for a 2000-lb animal who cannot be bothered to scratch his own back. Not to mention "hippos" are the only marine vertebrates that can't actually swim. If they get into water above their heads, they take a big breath, sink to the bottom and walk to shallower water.
Seems like a marginal lifestyle.

Not a cool as a stretchy-bird (or "Goliath Heron" as they call them here). These guys are 1.5m tall, and put the Great Blue Heron to shame, both for greatness, and for blueness. Here the dude was suffering from the

heat a bit (as was I), so he was huffing his cheeks and slowly wafting his wings to lose heat. Notably, he was not standing in the shade a few feet away.