In the morning we went for a one hour walk away from the boat and then turned round and came back. We saw quite a few people taking diving instructions. The coral came up to the harbour wall in several places and we saw some blue fish.
Our tour left at 12:30 and Barbara, our tour guide, was excellent, with an exceptional knowledge of the island. She had two large bags filled with pictures of birds and other random items. We saw three flamingos in the distance just after we entered the park , and four closer ones when we're leaving the park. The salt flat area at the moment is short of water as salt production has ceased here, but still continues in the South of the island. The cacti were amazing and have tree trunks with cacti on to like branches. The trunks are used for furniture making. In the museum there were pictures of fencing made from tall straight cacti and Barbara had a pair of the utensils used for handling the cacti to make the fences. We also saw many examples of the fences in use on the truck journey. Goats and donkeys are present on the island, although we did not see many except on the way back when we saw a goat meat farm with lots of goats behind the house. The cacti mainly flower in October once the rain comes. The flowers then form fruit which the birds eat. In the National History Museum at the entrance to the park is a whole whale skeleton that had been reassembled by school children, quite an achievement. They also had fantastic murals of birds, though the actual birds we heard are hard to spot and they fly off before I could photograph them. We went to the Bocca Kokolishi hidden coral beach which was beautiful, and we saw incredible coral rocks as we were walking to the beach and on the huge rocks. Near where we stopped the truck a lot of lizards came out of the bushes and Barbara managed to let one eat hard boiled egg out of her hand.
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