other little beach buddies

LAST Saturday...

(I know! A whole week ago almost! I am becoming a slacker poster...not unlike an older sibling of mine, who shall remain nameless, though I only have ONE older sibling. This highlights the importance, even when grown, of older siblings still being good examples to the younger ones. Not that Aislinn is fully to blame, but partially. Oops, I named her.)

...we went to our favorite semi-close beach here in Uruguay: Punta Colorada. Not long ago, we discovered that there was a little sea animal rehab place, called SOS/Rescate de Fauna Marina, just a couple of minutes before our usual stop, so we decided to go and visit.


Here are Bran and Nuala and a bunch of penguins. These little guys were victims of an oil spill, and though they've been here for a couple of months and are fine and dandy oil-wise, they have to grow back more of their feathers before they can be released. They were so funny, they moved almost as one. Shift to one side in front of their pen, they all shifted that way. They were like sunflowers and we were the sun. What power we had...kidding! but not, it really was like that. Bran especially loved them. There was a chubby little fellow standing off to the left of the picture, and he kept watching Bran with his bright black eye.

There he is! On the left. The tubby one. The tubby one on the right is Nuala.

These next two pictures are merely to illustrate why we seldom have pictures where BOTH Bran and Nuala are looking at the camera. Looking and SMILING at the same time is even more rare. When that happens...wow. Cause for celebration. Usually it ends up on the blog, slipped in nonchalantly, so people think it's a normal occurence. Guess I blew that theory out of the water! Picture One: Bran looking decent, half-heartedly waving while trying to see one of the sea lions across the way. Nuala must've heard a splash, or had a twitch, or who knows what.

Picture Two: Nuala trying to humor Mom and Dad with a sorta-smile, but now Bran is distracted...AGAIN. Oh well! Such is the life. Thank goodness for digitial cameras, huh? Eight million pictures later, there's bound to be one or two where they both cooperate. Okay, that's an exaggeration, probably more like 5 outta 3 million. Though with kids this cute, even if they're not both looking, it's okay :)

And los lobos del mar...literally that means, "wolves of the sea," though you would think they would call them leones (lions) del mar. I think they're also called "leones marinos" but here they're lobos. I kinda like that better anyway. This one was a female, about 6 months old. She was a little performer, very cute.

This was a male, also 6 months old. His eyes were kinda creepy. Like fly eyes, but still, cute. He didn't seem too pleased to see us. Flopped as far away as he could.

And this little guy! Also 6 months old, but about 1/5 the size of the big fellow (obviously different types of sea lions). He looked so scrawny and ratty, but was really friendly. He kept hopping over to us, and then he'd twist his neck around and look at us upside down. The twins loved him! I guess if you're there when it's feeding time, you can help, and touch the animals and all, so we'll try to tweak our timing a little better next time.

And Bran and his pingüino friends again. (That's what B&N call them, or rather, -güinos, like, "gweenos", and it sounds so cute!) They got out of the water and waddled along their fence to follow us as best they could. So cute. I bet we could sneak one out, they'd never miss him! Yeah, they probably would. But soooo cute! I know I've said "cute" about 600 times already, but I'm just trying to crank this post out and my brain is rebelling at thinking of synonyms...adorable? precious? somehow those sound a little weird. Cute works.

Then we hit the beach, and on the way home we were rerouted because of forest/brush fires. We're in the middle of a drought right now, and there have been several fires in the afueras, or outside the city. Last time we went to Punta Colorada, a couple of weeks ago, there was another one going on, too. This time they were flying the helicopters with buckets back and forth on our way home, so we watched for a little while. Bran and Nuala loved seeing all the "helicoppys" of course, but the amount of water they dumped just looked so insignificant. Probably there was more smoke than fire, as usual, but still...I hoped they aimed it right. I don't really know how quickly they got it under control or anything, but it was interesting to watch them fly back and forth.

We're all hoping for rain, here!!! You should see our front yard. Dead as the poor green loro (parrot) that was plopped in it the other day. Which naturally was of great interest to the twins. Nuala kept wanting to give it besos, for its owies. Bran liked poking it with a stick... So anyway, all y'all with any extra precipitation around, we won't mind a bit if you send it south a little...