Ocean water tastes terrible!

JONES SAUSAGE ROAD 1/2 mile

This post is coming a little late, because it actually was Memorial Day when Mike came to visit. We made the smart decision (like the rest of humanity in North Carolina) to head to the beach that day. It was a three hour drive so we amused ourselves along the way with my early birthday present, a new 160GB ipod. Besides playing with that we spent our time taking pictures of some interesting road signs :  )

Once we made it to the beach, which took over two hours of driving around looking for a parking spot, we went straight for the surf! It was not disappointing, the waves were huge, and there were quite a few surfers taking advantage. I made a very important discovery (the hard way I should add): do NOT drink sea water. As a giant wave brought down its wrath on me I inadvertently inhaled an exceptional amount of water. And guess what...it tastes horrible. The taste is reminiscent of the smell of fish that has gone bad. And the second part of my discovery is that this taste/smell lingers, well pretty much for the rest of the day.

On a more attractive note Mike and I have now decided that we are going to add another very expensive hobby to our list of extremely expensive hobbies (for example: rock climbing, ice climbing, travel...) We are going to take surf lessons! The ultimate goal will be to go back to Peru and spend some quality time with the rock of the ocean cliffs, and the waves of the surf while camping on the beach in between the two. Always looking for the next adventure...



Crowned Lemur



Of course since Mike was visiting I had to show him where I am doing my research this summer. So we took the official tour at the Duke Lemur Center.

Ringtailed Lemur scent marking a tree

 On the tour we of course had to stay on the outside of the enclosures, but for my research I actually get to go inside to work with the lemurs. (Hopefully this summer I will be able to get some pictures without the mesh obstructing the view.)

Coquerel's Sifaka (my favorite!)

 Here are some pictures of three different species, not even close to all of the species! At the Duke Lemur center there are at least 20 species. Also Mike and I were fortunate enough to be touring on the debut weekend for the new tour path which is very beautiful.

The name of the mom is Pia and the baby is Adelaide.

New tour path

Galavanting about the campus

Mike came to visit! So of course we had to tour Duke's campus, which is rather huge. I heard an estimate about how long it takes to walk from one side of campus to the other...50 minutes, yikes. So we didn't do that but we hit up some of the more important parts. I took him through the Bryan Center which is the student union, where we had an impromptu bouldering session.

Also we wandered around the beautiful buildings near the heart of campus. Especially admiring some of the unique old doors.

And of course we had to take pictures at the Duke Chapel, because it is probably one of the most well known parts of campus. We took some pictures of the impressive stone building and stunning glass windows, that might be stained glass it's hard to tell. We then noticed there was a wedding going on inside, so no pictures in there. Someone actually told me that sometimes they had up to 2 or 3 weddings a day in the chapel on the weekends.

 

And of course we had to use the self-timer to get a picture of us together.