Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Upper Key - Islamorada - Theater of the Sea






On Feb. 2, Richard and I decided to head down to the Upper Keys, Islamorada...We wanted to go to The Theater of the Sea...a small version of Seaworld, kinda...

On our way down to Islamorada, we stopped off at McD's for breakfast so that we didn't have to buy lunch at The Theater of the Sea...Which was good cause they really didn't have anything good there...Well, they did have a good strawberry type dacquiri with no rum...."But where's the rum!"...


Iguanas? What Iguanas? There were some colorful iguanas in the trees...We saw some brightly orange iguanas and with the spikes that they had on their backs, I don't think any one would want to touch them...

Can you spot the orange iguana?


We got on a bottomless boat and got a small ride on the lagoon to see "flipper"...By the time that I could see where the porpoise was going to jump, I may have been a little late...Later on we got to watch the 2 porpoises perform...After riding the boat for about 15 minutes, everyone got off and started exploring...We headed off to the left and followed a path to where there were colorful fishes, old tortoises, exotic birds and The Beach...

On a path, we found little ponds where different tortoises were being kept so that they stay well and out of harm...One tortoise has to have a life vest around it so that it can float...We were told that the back end of this tortoise was too heavy and that the front end was too light and that without the life vest, the poor thing would drown and not be able to come up for air...There was tarpon in a pond and a redfish...It was a bit difficult to get the pictures of these fish but we tried our best...

Along the path are the parrots...All kinds of parrots...Red Macaw...Blue Macaw...and other parrots that I can not remember the kind of what they are...and I should cause my mom had a parrot just like the one shown below...She also had a Red Macaw and a Yellow Nap Amazon and a Grey Amazon parrot...Almost all of the parrots were preening...Cleaning their feathers or cleaning their buddies' feathers...


Then we went in to Parrot Show...


That was really wild...There were about 10 or 11 parrots who where show-offs...It was a pretty neat show...One parrot put a plastic bottle in a trash can to help recycle...One parrot raised the American flag...One parrot put a quarter in a slot machine...We could stay and get to hold one of them but we were heading over to the porpoise show...

The porpoise show was cool...Nothing really spectacular...Nothing that we haven't seen before...Flipping and waving and splashing water...but I did get to go down to the platform and get a kiss from one of them...There are 2 porpoises in Theater of the Sea...They have names but i do not remember their names...But what I remember was how their little noses were all skinned up and how their breath smelled like fish...*dah!* That's all they get as a reward for doing their performances...but I got to kneel down and have the nose touch my cheek for a kiss...It was pretty wild...and the closest that I have ever gotten to a porpoise...

After the porpoise show, we went to the Sea Lion show starring Walter...A pretty big sea lion...He did his tricks, balancing a ball on his nose, catching some rings around his neck, jumping through a hoop, sliding down a sliding board and clapping...

Then we finished up by walking down to the Beach...Not much there...Just some chairs and a little tiki hut where you can get a snorkel mask, fins, etc. for rent...There really wasn't much there...At least not to us...

We ended our day with a little more walking around to get pictures of the pretty flowers and plants...Plants that we do not see anywhere else...and Orchids...