Category Archives: travel

Years later, we are back visiting Finca Isla in San Carlos, Costa Rica. I have taken very very many photos and videos, and am going to dump some here. Does this mean I’m going revive this blog? Probably not, but … Continue reading →

I showed up in Sydney wanting to see the flying foxes that lived in the Botanical Gardens, but it turns out that they’ve been driven out in recent years (I guess because all of those tiny feet were wearing out … Continue reading →

Some days you just want to sit on a beach and shoot video of ghost crabs. For roughly my whole life I’ve wondered why white-sand beaches only have white crabs and black-sand beaches only have black crabs. I figured that … Continue reading →

At the tail-end of a series of meetings in Puerto Rico, my work department took a tour of El Yunque National Forest. I was extremely excited to find the shrimp along the edge of our swimming hole and spent a … Continue reading →

How many guppies do they raise here? This many: There were nearly as many ponds devoted to other livebearers: platys, swordtails, mollys. In the case of the swordtails a single giant pond was subdivided with hanging nets. I’m not sure … Continue reading →

After a short bus trip down a very bumpy road (and past some cows, buffalo, and cornfields) we arrived at the main farm. The main farm is enormous (10 hectares, 24 acres) and runs alongside a canal that provides a … Continue reading →

This section of the farm consisted of many tarp-lined ponds full of cut lengths of pvc pipe. The pipe were, presumably, full of adult ancistrus (‘plecos’) of various kinds sitting on eggs, but no adults were visible through the glare. … Continue reading →

Saigon Aquarium’s ‘small farm’ raises about 100,000 Corydoras catfish per year. Green, albino (both C. aeneus I presume), panda, and sterbai. There was a bit of a language gap between me and the tour guide (mostly due to my being … Continue reading →

On a whim while on the train ride to Ho Chi Minh City I wrote to the ‘contact us’ address at Saigon Aquarium asking if I could visit their breeding facilities. Much to my surprise I got a speedy ‘yes’ … Continue reading →