I’ve been involved somewhat actively in community church activities this year. Today was one of those days in which we give to the community and, apparently, was the UN World Enviornment Day. A group of us went to participate in the Union Slough Saltmarsh and Habitat Restoration Project. The project is to improve the wildlife habitat at the saltmarsh restoration site in the Snohomish River delta. Today’s goal was to weed out blackberry vines.
[ Here's a link to putgetsound.org's volunteer page: http://pugetsound.org/act/volunteer ]

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So you would be wondering why blackberry vines or bushes are bad when they provide succulent blackberries and a livinig habitat for wildlife. Apparently, blackberry vines, when unmanaged, takes over the area in which native plants grow and flurish, agressively crowding out or killing other plants such as the willow which the blackberry vines engulfed in the area we worked on.
[ What are blackberries? It's not the mobile phone. Click here for the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackberry ]
[ What's a willow? It's a tree. Click here for the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow ]

I arrived at the site at around 9:30AM. The tools and the gloves were provided and we didn’t have to bring our own, but, we had to bring our own protective clothes which were, apparently, very important. I got a bunch of scratches on both of my arms while working on getting rid of the vines.

Before getting the orientation and gearing up, I took some time to take pictures of the immediately near surrounding area.

Here’s Beatriz who is giving all the volunteers the orientation. She is one of the people who works for the People for Puget Sound and who is a student from Brazil learning about and gaining experience on restorations.

Now the gear up.

We’re getting instructed on how to root out the vines.

Now we’re working including taking poses. =D

The gloves.

Lunch was very light. I was not able to eat much. I had a slight headache and felt exhausted after working under the sun for a while. I did not realize how arduous gardening was; I never had to chop or weed out vines before. The most I have done until now was cutting the grass with a lawn mower.

I guess, there wasn’t a place to sit down other than here. =D

Exhausted.

I took some time to walk around during the 1 hour lunch break.

Here are the scratches on my arms.

I just like making funny faces.

After lunch, we worked for another 2 hours and we called it a day. Here’s Beatriz giving us the closing remarks and showing us her gratitude for coming out on a really nice Saturday to help out on the restoration project.

Final shot for the day. Tourist style. =)

According to Wikipedia, Port Moody is a small, crescent-shaped city in Metro Vancouver, located at the east end of Burrard Inlet in British Columbia, Canada. Port Moody is the smallest of the Tri-Cities, bordered by Coquitlam on the east and south, and Burnaby on the west. The villages of Belcarra and Anmore, along with the rugged Coast Mountains, lie to the northwest and north respectively.

My parents were renting a place for a month until they can move into their new place somewhere around the 20th or so. Here are some pictures of the inlet.

When I went on to scrutinize the quality of the pictures taken with the DSC-WX1, my heart sank. There were more noise than I expected even for a point and shoot camera of the size of WX1 under nominal conditions: Bright day light at ISO400, WB AUTO. LX3′s sensor area(1/1.63) is about 30% bigger than the WX1′s(1/2.4″). WX1′s new Exmor R sensor did not defy physics at all which it should have based on its advertisement.

WX1 is going back to the shop. Fortunately, I was able to fetch the LX3 at $429 including tax, and shipping and handling at Amazon.com: There was only one in stock at the time I browsed the product details page. I shouldn’t have expected too much from a company not known to produce good cameras.

We’ve tried rescheduling our flight. To reschedule, we had to pay $400 extra for each ticket. $800 was more than what we paid for the two way flight for both of us. So we decided to take the last ferry at 12:00AM; get to the airport as fast as we could; check in our bags; and enjoy the club scene in the Cancun hotel district. My girl friend heard about a lot of good things about a place called Coco Bongo which was our venue for the night.

Everything went as planned until we arrived at the airport at around 1:20AM: The airport was closed. I never knew of an international airport that closes until this night. The aiport did not even have a locker room in which we can put our luggage. Fortunately, we had a nice taxi driver who had lived in Texas for a few years just a few months ago. He would watch our luggage and come back at 5AM at the night club. For some reason, he was trustworthy and we trusted him.

We paid $30 each to get into Coco Bongo; for $30 we had all-you-can-drink until 3:30AM or so.

Coco Bongo is famous for being a night club with fancy shows. I wasn’t expecting much but when we got in the party was one that we’ve never experienced or seen before. When we went into the scene, the spider man show was on. One dressed as spider man and the other as the Green Goblin were mimicking a battle from the movie scene.

The most memorable show for the night for me was the Michael Jackson tribute show.

While the shows were going on, I was busy getting drinks: tequila shots as the main drink and beer as refreshments.

The club itself was like a parade.

After clubbing, I had the munchies and decided to try some Mexican street tacos. The beef in the tacos was very spicy and cooked to perfection: soft, moist, and chewy.

The entire night was very eventful with unexpected funs. Also, the taxi driver was waiting for us as he promised.

It was beautiful watching the sunrise from the ferry on our way to Cancun. Watching the sunrise and the dim sun light reflected on the green ocean was an unexpected memorable experience.

We got on the arranged van to our way to where we were supposed to take the bus. It was a tourist department store. We had to purchase the ticket ourselves. While we were waiting, we looked around and I was trying on Mexican hats which nobody bought, at least the people who were in the line to purchase tickets.

After Chichen Itza, we stopped by at some town in which the Spanish settled during the colonial time and some underground cave.

On our way to Chichen Itza, the tour guide kindly asked us not to buy anything from the site as the owner of the site, the Barbecheno family who sold parts of the National monument in the black market benefits from the sales. He told us that Chichen Itaza is a sacred ground on which having merchants selling products on the site is wrong and a disgrace. He insisted that we buy from the place where the tourist bus is heading towards. The place we went to had prices twice as expensive as the ones at the historical ruins. I thought it was a propaganda to prevent people from getting the same products at a higher price; however, a couple of Google searches reveal that what the tour guide claimed is true.

I’m in for a bottle of tequila.

When we finally arrived at Chichen Itza, it was around 12PM when the sun was the strongest during the day. We were sweating like a condensed bottle of ice water in heat. I was glad that we packed a gallon of water. While touring the site, the tour guide gave us a great explanation of the Mayan history and their culture. On every building we went to, the tour guide gave us a thorough explanation. It’s unfortunate that I don’t remember half of what he said; because it was excruciatingly hot such that I wasn’t able to concentration much. I felt as if I was in a steam sauna.

After Chichen Itza, we went to a town in which the Spanish settled during the colonial times, and an underground cave in which we were allowed to swim.

I took some pictures of the Catholic church in the town.

The entrance to the cave.

Inside the cave was very cool.

So we walked towards one of the rental golf cart solicitors and negotiated with the rental price. The first one said $45 for 5 hours. The price was already discounted from what was listed on a white board on the wall with green and black letters. We said we would think about it and went to the other one a block away. We said the other merchant would give us 5 hours for $40 and we got a deal at $35. Deals do work in towns of which economy relies solely on tourist. It’s fun making deals.

Here’s me getting a tutorial on how to operate the golf cart.

We obtained a pamphlet that had the map of the island. There were two tourist attractions of our interest: the Mayan post which is located at the east end of the island, and the Tortuganja which is the sea turtle reservation area.

We first arrived at the Tortuganja. This was my first time touching a live sea turtle. The shell felt like wet suede leather.

This is where the eggs are protected under surveillance.

There are many pools in which the turtles remain. Each pool carries a group of turtles of the same age.

This is where the full grown sea turtles are put into.

This is inside the aquarium of Tortuganja. These are infant sea turtles.

After hanging around the area for about an hour, we took off to the Mayan post. On our way, we encountered the island made of PAT plastic bottles. I remember seeing the island on a Korean TV show called “Around the World” some 10 years ago.

When we arrived at the east end of the island at which the Mayan post is located, we were impressed other than the ocean view.

There was a light house of which we decided to go on top. The view was amazing as shown in the pictures below.

On our way back to the hotel for a late lunch, we passed by a few beaches at the east end. The view of the beaches made us in dire need of our bathing suits ever more.

While having lunch, we decided that we need to go to a major Mayan ruin, Chichen Itza, and the hotel hooked us up with a tour bus deal for $70 per person. We had to wake up at 5AM in the morning to make it to Cancun by 8am from which the tourist bus leaves. We were told that it would take about 3 hours to get to Chichen Itza from Cancun.

One thing we learned on the first day of our trip is to have our bathing suit with us on our carry on luggage. Our bathing suits were in the checked-in luggage and we didn’t get to enjoy the warm blue clear ocean. Also, I was wearing jeans which made walking around feel like having a lower body wet sauna.

Here’s a picture of the hotel in which we stayed.

In the morning, we had the breakfast buffet.

After breakfast, we went for a walk around town. When we were walking towards our hotel from the ferry dock last night, I identified the island as an authentic ocean front village in which people are relaxed as if they are oblivious of commitments and time. I wanted to capture, at least, the architecture of the island that represents my initial impression of the island life.

Here’s the beach in front of the hotel.

Here are the pictures of the town near the hotel.

It’s unfortunate that I completely forgot to take pictures of the airport.

At the airport we learned that the ferries to the island from Cancun operates every 30 minutes and the last ferry is at 12:00am.

Here’s the ticketing booth of the ferry on the Cancun side.

We were hungry and we were glad that there was a McDonalds just across the ticketing booth.

Here’s the ferry dock.

While waiting for our ferry to arrive, I realized that there was an event on which the winner gets both the car and the motorcycle. The car is a Nissan and I haven’t seen such a model in my life. I wasn’t actually motivated to enter in the contest as you can see.

The ferry was two stories high. The seatings in the first floor was indoors and the first floor was very well air conditioned. Inside, it felt as if we were in the fridge so we decided to go on the second floor which was out door. We also wanted to enjoy the night scene.

Here’s the photo from the ferry while leaving the port.

The night scene on the hotel district in Cancun seen from the ferry.

When we arrived at the hotel, we were booked for the wrong type of room. It seems like one side made the mistake during communicating which room we booked. Expedia says we booked for an ocean view for which I paid a premium but the Hotel says we booked for the same type of room with no ocean view. The hotel personnel was courteous enough to give us a free upgrade the next day when rooms became available. Apparently, there was a wedding event in the hotel and the hotel was fully booked.

The atmosphere was very humid making it unbearable not to take a shower before going to sleep.