Richard and I have been entertaining ourselves by lazing about, snorkeling in turquoise waters, hiking dry islands and puttering about in small dinghies. All this exploring lets us get up close and personal with some of the critters in this world. One of my favorite critters is a boxfish on drugs. It is called a Pacific or Spotted boxfish. The silly thing is abut 6 inches long and quite square. Where its back is a flat plateau and its sides jut down as if someone had folded a piece of paper at 45 degrees down. The all over color is deep purple. Its cheeks are pink and the flat top is covered in day-glo orange and white spots. This fish needs to be a Hawaiian shirt. Lately we are considering taking up running Eagle ray tours. Three times we have gone to the same sandy spot just inside a magnificently arched rock off the tip of an island in Chamela bay. Each time beautiful spotted eagle rays have been soaring about the sandy patch. The rays are dark chocolate brown with a white underside. The brown is covered with white spots. Every ray's spots are unique to that ray, like fingerprints. The water is an opaque grainy green out of which the rays silently glide. They move in and out of our view, under and over us. They don't flap their wings, they slowly dip the leading edge down and then up, the ripple continues all along their body.   At the moment we are anchored next to a booby sanctuary. We've been passing out bikini tops and bras..... Sigh, I know but really, a booby sanctuary, it brings out the 12 year-old in all of us. Actually the island is a bird sanctuary in general. The cacti are filled with boobies, frigates and the occasional vulture. The frigate males are all back with a magnificent red throat. When the frigate sees a cute chick, feels his manhood has been threatened, just feels really good he puffs up his throat until it looks like a tomato red balloon. The loons are very gentle. You can walk up to them, within a foot or so, and they look up at you with a sad, soft, serious face as if to ask, "Are you my mama?" They slowly turn their head from side to side eyeing you, occasionally scratching their beak solemnly with an oversized foot. I can see why they need a sanctuary, they are far too trusting for this world. Boobies are not very good on land. They have these huge webbed feet, impossible to find a good pair of black pumps for. When they try to walk, they lift one big, blue foot up and then, very carefully, set it down in front of the other, equally large foot. If they are not careful, they step on their own foot. This gives them an extremely exaggerated waddle. A bit like Americans after Thanksgiving dinner. While returning from the small town of Perula for groceries (fresh corn tortillas and golden pineapple) we noticed whale spouts in the bay. Richard perked up his ears and said, "Lets go find the whales!" Jen and Rich grab their dive gear and storm off in the 8 foot inflatable towards the middle of the bay. As we slow the boat down to wait for the whales next appearance, a huge, gargantuan back slowly curls up and ever so slowly becomes an equally huge tail about block from the teeny, tiny dinghy. Jen, eyes wide, lets out a girlie squeak, no, no, more like a girlie SCREAM. Rich makes ready to get closer and just as he is about to do so, an animal growl erupts from the smallish woman next to him, "Don't even THINK about getting any closer." At this point Richard may be more afraid of this little woman that the little woman is of the great, big, huge mammal. They get no closer. (Let it be known that Richard the fearless was ready to pull up by and splash down in the water with the great critters. Jen duly admits to being a great girlie scaredy cat when face to face with the biggest living thing she has ever been near.) As they sit bobbing, one whale breaches. He comes fully out of the water, tail and all like a surfacing submarine and then comes down in a huge splash. This is definitely an entertaining trip