Eye of the Cormorant

another odd bird who chases fish.

Category: Musings on things other than fish

  • Full Self-Driving Mode

    We have a 2023 Tesla Model-Y.  We might not have bought one today, given the company’s CEO and largest stock-holder, but selling the car would not hurt this asshole one iota, and it’s still a great car, especially for long road trips.

    When we got the Y, nicknamed “the Batmobile”, the all-wheel drive model was the only EV on the market that could tow my boat trailer to Flamingo and back on a single charge. It’s been a great car overall. My friend at Tesla says it’s the best of the Tesla line, and that you’d have to get a Rivian at double the price to get a better EV.

    One thing I like is that the car keeps getting better instead of staying the same or getting worse. Every two weeks, Tesla pushes a software update to the car. The most recent one adjusts the headlight angle dynamically to keep the beams level when the car is loaded differently (e.g., towing a boat trailer). No more beams tipped up into the eyes of unhappy oncoming drivers.

    Two and a half years ago, Tesla offered a free one-month subscription to “Full Self-Driving Mode (Supervised)”. This is the software that lets the car drive itself autonomously. The word “Supervised” means that you have to keep your eyes on the road, and the car watches to make sure you do. It also wants you to keep hold of the steering wheel.

    This would also be the same software that has produced some spectacular and fatal crashes. Essentially Tesla encouraged customers to pay for the experience of beta-testing self-driving software on American roads at 70 plus miles an hour.

    Since I got a month free, I decided to try it on my morning drive to work. What could go wrong?

    I quickly found that my car visually tethered itself to the car directly in front, speeding up and slowing down constantly to maintain an exact interval of 7 car lengths. It failed to anticipate problematic traffic conditions that were visible to me several blocks ahead and which could have been avoided by changing lanes early. Plus, the car required constant supervision. I had to be ready to intervene instantly if it did something stupid or unexpected. It was like being driven to work by an over-caffeinated student driver, not relaxing in the slightest. After 15 minutes, I’d had more than enough. I turned off the self-driving software and ended my free subscription 29 days early.

    Fast forward two and a half years.

    My climate scientist friend John Van Leer was an early Tesla adopter, driving his Model S all over the country. John now owns a Tesla Cybertruck, which he operates in Full Self-Driving Mode (Supervised). After my experience, I was amazed to hear John say it drives better than he does. Either John is a terrible driver or Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Mode has improved considerably.

    Another friend, Peter Rabbino, has a Tesla Model-Y in which he too has “handed over the keys” to Full Self-Driving Mode (note: a Tesla does not have keys). Hearing my disparaging view, he asked when I last used Self-Driving Mode. Two and a half years ago? Peter insisted that today’s software had learned an immense amount in that time and was a different beast entirely. He urged me to give it another try.

    So I did. Here’s my report.

    Executive summary

    Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Mode (Supervised) is now great on the highway but still sucks in town.

    Suburban driving test

    On Monday, the software drove me around Miami for a couple of medical appointments, one of which was the ophthalmologist who would dilate my pupils and make it hard to drive home. The car got me where I wanted to go, but it made regular mistakes that required my intervention. Here are some of its bone-headed maneuvers:

    1. Turning out of a medical office complex driveway at a blind intersection on SW 87th Ave, my car started to pull into traffic. It noticed a car coming, slammed on the brakes, and sat there. The driver of the other car stopped in the middle of traffic and waved her hand for me to go. Of course my car didn’t recognize her hand gestures and wouldn’t move, so I took over and pulled out, waving a thank you / apology to the other driver.
    2. Preparing to make a left turn at a traffic light on US 1, my car abandoned the left turn lane for the next lane over, a thru lane with fewer cars. Then it tried to cut back into the turn lane it had abandoned. I’m not an asshole (Elon), so I took over and waited for all those cars to clear the intersection on the left arrow before pulling back in and waiting through the next light cycle for my turn.
    3. The software got stumped by an orange plastic barrier erected in a complex parking lot at Baptist Hospital and had to be rescued, which I managed through two pairs of sunglasses, despite my chemically compromised vision.

    Highway driving test

    On Tuesday I had the software drive me to Jupiter FL and back for a fishing trip, two hours each way.

    I hadn’t slept well after a late dinner and was pretty tired when I headed out from home in the dark at 4:45 am. Not a bad morning to have someone else do the driving.

    At site of the new SR 836 bridge over the downtown, the highway was closed for construction. The car got off the highway on its own, wended through a maze of twists and turns near the Miami River, and wound up back up on I95 headed north. One thing that can mess me up on a trip through unfamiliar territory is the double right exit problem. Sometimes you’re directed to make a turn then encounter two exits close together that are not well-enough marked to figure out in a limited time which one you should take. The software knew and chose the correct turn every time. Much appreciated.

    I truly hate driving on a highway in the dark with a concrete construction barrier on one side of me and trucks roaring along on the other side. Full Self-Driving Mode handled it with grace, holding smoothly to the lane without causing me anxiety. I made it through the construction zone at the posted speed without the usual white knuckles. Thank you, car.

    After that I had to do nothing except watch the road, hands on the wheel, until the car pulled into the parking lot for the boat ramp in Jupiter.

    It proved a gorgeous morning to be on the water with my former student, Capt. Mike Haines.

    I caught and released some nice fish.

    Driving home was smooth, save for the software making one significant suburban driving mistake and one minor highway driving mistake.

    Just as the car reached an intersection between the boat ramp and the highway, a traffic light turned yellow. The car drove on through the yellow, which was fine, but mid-intersection, it tapped the brakes three times in rapid succession. NO! BAD CAR! Stop before the intersection or go through it, but for heaven’s sake, don’t split the difference.

    The car dId a great job monitoring speed limit signs and adjusting the speed accordingly, but it did miss one speed limit sign in a construction zone. I caught it and slowed down.

    Heading south on Florida’s Turnpike, a thunderstorm opened up full bore. I let the software continue driving to see how it would perform. It did surprisingly well. The car held the lane perfectly despite the low visibility. We slowed down just a little because the cars in front of us had done so.

    The self-driving software has three modes “Chill”, “Standard” and “In a Hurry”. I started out the day in Chill mode and found it a bit too chill. Coming up behind another car going 5 mph under the speed limit, my car tended to hang back. When I bumped the mode up to “Standard”, it was more inclined to change lanes so as to maintain the speed limit. The car’s cameras look in all four directions at once, so it changes lanes really well, better than I do. It does a famously good job of avoiding the bad driver who shifts lanes without looking.

    I found that I could maintain sufficient attention for the odd situation that might require my intervention, such as the missed speed limit sign. I appreciated that the robotic system never got tired, its mind never drifted, and it could hold the lane on a curve while I selected a new podcast.

    * * *

    As of 6-Oct-2026

    Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Mode (Supervised) resembles other AI systems in that it doesn’t have a social conscience, and like Tesla’s GROK AI, it fails to create a responsible social role for itself. It defines other vehicles in its working space as car, truck, or motorcycle objects and doesn’t recognize the rights, desires, or intentions of their drivers. Nor does it pay attention to their brake lights. The car has such good regenerative braking, I almost never touch the brake pedal. But lacking even the simplest theory of mind, the self-driving software fails to anticipate the actions of other drivers (e.g., the driver of the car in front of us is probably going to slow before reaching the red light), so it has to brake fairly often. Frequent braking makes the ride less smooth, the EV less efficient, and it puts unnecessary wear on the brake shoes.

    It makes no social accommodation for pedestrians. For example, if you are driving and see someone in neighborhood roadway pushing a stroller or walking a dog, you immediately slow down and shift your trajectory to signal that you see them. The software detects them but continues on the same trajectory longer than a polite human driver would. Its goal is to pilot the car safely, not to put others at ease.

    I don’t drive that way and I don’t want to be driven by a robot that drives that way, so I won’t use the self-driving software when driving in town, where social accommodation is a priority.

    However, I will definitely use Full Self-Driving Mode for future highway driving on long road trips, where the software might outperform a normal driver. On the highway, being careful and predictable is generally sufficient courtesy to the other drivers. I don’t mind taking over when we leave the highway in order to get a more relaxed experience with fewer snafus.

    Software update, 14-Oct-2026

    A new software update installed itself with improvements to self-driving mode including a new “Sloth Mode” and better pedestrian awareness.

    They definitely help with in-town driving.

    I let the car drive me to an appointment in “Chill Mode” (one up from “Sloth Mode”). It stopped for a pedestrian who was waiting off the road at the edge of a crosswalk to see if I’d stop for him. Good car.

    It drove me to my appointment with no scary moments. It found an open parking spot in the lot and parked in it, aligned perfectly. After my appointment, I asked the car to come pick me up outside the office. It did so, waiting carefully for other cars in the lot to get out of its way.

    for the drive home through traffic I set the car to the new “Sloth Mode”. It used the regenerative braking more and the disc brakes less. Again, no scary moments or stupid moves, though I took over to execute the nettlesome blind turn and a “thread the needle” turn through oncoming traffic into our neighborhood. I have not fully overcome my trust issues with robotic driving.

    Then I let it finish the drive home. It crept along below the speed limit at a speed safe for our neighborhood, then backed adroitly into our driveway, dodging the recycle bin at the curb and leaving room for Gray to park our faithful Nissan Leaf. I’ll be interested to see how it does with the neighborhood’s roaming flocks of peafowl and toddling broods of ducklings.

  • Streets of Arles

    The city of Arles in the south of France dates to pre-Roman times. Built at the mouth of the Rhône, three millennia of silt deposition has left the city ~50 km inland of its original situation on the Mediterranean.

    Romans took control of the city and built an arena to entertain their new subjects with gladiator fights. The arena has been partially restored. Incongruous metal bleachers with safety rails were added to accommodate modern audiences in the highest places where the original stone seating could not be supported. Ascending and descending the steep stone stairways in the strong Mistral wind of the Rhône valley, we appreciated the new iron hand rails.

    Not wishing to restrict entertainment to the martial arts, the Romans followed up their arena with an elegant semicircular amphitheater next door. It has been partially reconstructed as well. While we sat in the top row, one of a group of Japanese tourists stepped up to the stage at the coaxing of his friends. Here’s a snippet of what happened next:

    Wherever I go, I seek out nature the way a beagle hunts a dropped slice of pepperoni. Accordingly, I spotted wild things on the periphery of the urban hardscape. High atop the rim of the ancient arena, I watched White Storks catching thermals to assist their migration southward to sub-Saharan Africa.

    In the marsh of a finely landscaped park next to Frank Gehry’s shiny LUMA tower, I found happy frogs of Arles celebrating the departure of the hungry storks.

    Does a tiny Fiat Topolino (“little mouse”) EV count as animal, vegetable, or mineral?

    Vincent van Gogh, during his 16 month stay in Arles, produced 300 paintings. Gray, sketchbook and watercolor set in hand, cooed in ecstasy our entire week in Arles.

    Gray’s excitement over the painting possibilities was contagious. As sun angles dropped each day, my eye was increasingly drawn to the glow and shadow of buildings along narrow streets of the old city.

    I finish with a progression of photos showing the changing light through the afternoon and into the night. I promise I did not enhance the colors.

    Goodnight moon. Goodnight Arles.

  • Birding the Camargue

    The Camargue is the floodplain delta of the Rhône, situated between the city of Arles, where we are staying, and the Mediterranean Sea. The terrain is flat and marshy, checkered with rice fields, brackish pools, small canals, salt ponds, and tidal estuaries. On the advice of my cousin Judy, we rented a car to visit the Camargue.

    DAY 1

    Our first afternoon with wheels we headed down the west side of the Camargue to the Parc Ornithologique.

    Enroute, we picked up a sweet young couple who were hitch-hiking, and drove them a bit beyond our turn-off to a better spot where they could find their next ride.

    The Parc Ornithologique is much like Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on Assateague Island, Virginia, but better in important ways. Impoundments are well-maintained and are teaming with water birds. The maze of trails is for walking only. Observation benches and blinds are situated close to the birds.

    Greater Flamingos are everywhere.

    The multilingual signage is informative, even for an old pro like me. For instance, banding results show the flamingoes roam the Mediterranean, but particular individuals return to this park year after year.

    I learned that Cetti’s Warbler is one of the few polygynous passerines. My bird book told me that Cetti’s Warbler sings from concealed spots, moving quickly from spot-to-spot. My Merlin phone app played me the song. Ah ha!

    I had been hearing the beautiful liquid song of Cetti’s Warblers everywhere and getting only the odd peak at its sources (nondescript brown-backed jobs with a faint white eye-line) hiding in the dense vegetation. Cetti’s Warbler, and the handsome European Dipper I encountered while trout fishing, were my new birds for the trip.

    In contrast to the solid orange-pink of the American Flamingos, the Greater Flamingos are pinkish white, with their crimson wing coverts and axillaries visible mainly in flight.

    Photo by Gray Read

    Hearing whinnies from across the thick reed beds, we finally saw the sources. As on Assateague Island, wild horses roam the marshy terrain of Camargue, accompanied by faithful Cattle Egrets, which sometimes rode on their backs.

    Nutria, introduced from South America, don’t seem to be doing so much damage to embankments as they did in the southeastern US.

    Park staff told us we could remain after the park closed for the evening, letting ourselves out via the revolving gate. It’s been very dry of late – we saw just one mosquito and one no-see-um – so we stayed until dusk, watching the day birds put themselves away for the night.

    As night herons emerged against a pink and purpling sky, we enjoyed a picnic supper of Brillat-Savarin cheese and guacamole on gluten-free toast accompanied by fresh plums and figs. Pas mal.

    DAY 2

    Having parked the car overnight near our apartment in Arles for half a Euro, we spent the next morning exploring the east side of the Camargue.

    We drove into the Reserve Nationale Camargue where sea salt has been evaporated and harvested from salt ponds at least since Roman times. Now it’s done with big machines instead of slaves.

    Sel de Camargue is found in all the local salt shakers. It’s good on fried potatoes and would go well with rice, if you could find rice.

    White dots in front of the salt mesa are flamingoes.

    We finally made it to the Mediterranean, where gleeful children splashed in the warm water and sweaty young Frenchmen enjoyed the manly art of hitting each other in the face.

    And Gray did what Gray does.

    For the birders among you, my bird list follows …

    18 Sep 2026, Parc Ornithologique &
    19 Sep 2026, Reserve Nationale Camargue

    • Great Crested Grebe
    • Great Cormorant 
    • Greater Flamingo
    • Great Grey Heron
    • Great Egret
    • Little Egret
    • Cattle Egret
    • Night Heron
    • Glossy Ibis
    • Mute Swan
    • Black Swan (1)
    • Common Shelduck
    • Mallard
    • Teal
    • Shoveler
    • European Coot
    • Moorhen
    • Western Swamphen
    • Yellow-footed Gull
    • European Herring Gull
    • Black-headed Gull
    • Caspian Tern
    • Sandwich Tern
    • Common Tern
    • Dunlin
    • Green Sandpiper
    • Greenshank
    • Redshank
    • Black-tailed Godwit
    • Avocet
    • Black-winged Stilt
    • Ringed Plover
    • European Kestrel
    • Sparrowhawk 
    • Marsh Harrier
    • Osprey 
    • Common Buzzard 
    • Kingfisher
    • Collared Dove
    • Rock Dove 
    • Barn Swallow
    • Sand Martin
    • Cetti’s Warbler
    • House Sparrow
    • Blue Tit

  • Fête du Riz

    Wandering the city of Arles, France, near the mouth of the Rhône, we keep seeing posters for the Fête du Riz (festival of the rice), featuring the 22eme Ambassadrice du Riz, Maëlys Carlotti, on horseback, holding a corsage of rice blossoms. She’s adorable:

    Yesterday, Gray and I took a rental car to Camargue, the marshy delta where the Rhône meets the Mediterranean. We saw tall rice plants growing in and around the small villages. More on that trip to follow.

    Back in Arles, returning from our dinner in the old city, we heard New Orleans jazz coming from across the river. We figured we’d walk over the bridge to hear the band close up, but the music came to us. The band was aboard a decorated wagon being drawn over the bridge by a farm tractor.

    Behind the float were three women on horseback:

    In the lead was Maëlys Carlotti, le Ambassadrice du Riz herself on her beautiful white horse!

    Her entourage gave us a pack of organic brown rice from the Camargue, where we’d been earlier in the day.

    You’d imagine rice would be on the menu in all the fine restaurants of Arles. Au contraire. Rice noodles at a Vietnamese restaurant were as close to rice as we’d come until now. This being the 42nd rice festival, rice must be an impossible sell to the wheat-loving French.

    But the magic was not over. Floats were lined up across the river to pass over the bridge and into the city, each with its own music and theme, and each followed by an entourage of costumed adults and kids, on foot. Here’s a sample:

    A dozen floats in all rolled past, each with a team of marchers trailing behind on foot. Then we were treated to a parade of old tractors, some real antiques.

    This was the last one.
    C’est finis.

    p.s. I finally found a Senegalese restaurant that serves a rice dish, on Sunday nights only.

  • Lagrasse

    We have spent an enchanted week-plus in the medieval town of Lagrasse, in the south of France. 

    After the Catholic Church successfully eradicated the heretical Cathars in the 14th Century, they established an abbey to preserve the Church’s grip on the populace. The town of Lagrasse grew up beside the abbey.

    The abbey today is inhabited by Jesuits who grow olives and wine grapes. In their long brown robes they play soccer with the local kids.

    The abbey’s bell rings on the half hour, followed exactly two minutes later by the bell of the local Catholic church.

    We stayed in the apartment of our old (but younger than us) friends Michael and Nan. A couple of days after we arrived, they drove the 12 hours from their residence in Delft, Netherlands, to join us for the week.

    The outer wall of their apartment is stone, a full meter thick, forming part of the outer wall of the town, properly defensible from whoever might attempt to take by force the local resources: wine, olive oil, and violet ice cream.

    Just a random bit of the cobblestone street.

    Every inch of the town begs for a watercolor painter. If only we knew one. 

    The only times Gray was without her sketchbook in hand were sleeping, swimming, and meals.

    Ok, scratch “and meals”.

    Lagrasse sits on the d’Orbieu River, a clear-running creek this time of year, which can rise 30 feet in flood, filling basements and first floors in the town.  In late summer, it’s more of a creek.

    The only grocer in town keeps random shop hours and stocks a random selection of wares to match.

    On Saturday morning, though, a market is held in the open square outside the apartment.

    On first glance, it doesn’t look like much, but step inside and look again…

    We stocked up on peaches, plums, vegetables, beef, poultry, sausage, salami, paté, cheeses, wine, and gluten-free bread. It’s France.

    For dessert we could wander down the lane along the river to an ice cream shop. Gray had mint chip in a cup. I had violet ice cream in a cone. It’s a thing.

    Michael and Nan, basking in the glow of ice cream.

    The river is home to herons, ducks, wagtails, astoundingly beautiful kingfishers, and Great Gray Herons that look like our Great Blue Heron but say “snirk!” instead of “snork!”.  And fish. 

    The d’Orbeau looks like a trout stream and is stocked with trout in the spring, but this time of year the visible fish are Chevesne aka Chevaine (Squalius cephalus) up to 18” in length and Mediterranean Barbel (Barbus meridionalis) up to 24”.

    I had planned a fishing-free vacation for my right hand to recover after a summer of excessive fly casting. But Michael discovered that I fly fished, disappeared into their store room, and emerged with four fly rods, reels to match, and assorted fly tackle, left over from his days fishing trout in the Colorado Rockies. 

    The water was cool, but warm enough for me to wade in my sandals.  I found the little Chevesne would pick at dry flies all day and the bigger ones would take a dry fly in the late afternoon.

    Chevesne caught on dry fly

    Barbels, however, preferred a slice of salami.

    Mediterranean Barbel, caught on salami.

    The Barbel looks like a bonefish and fights even harder than a wet rag. They try. I took a special liking to Barbels when I read they are considered a biological indicator of high water quality. Both species are eaten by the French, though the Barbel has poisonous roe. I let mine go back in the “river” to enjoy life and make more.

    Michael and Nan are former bike racers, and took regular bike rides on their featherweight carbon fiber bicycles.

    Nan, petite and svelte, remains a cycling beast, riding a fast 35 km through the foothills of the nearby Pyrenees one morning.

    Their apartment was briefly visible to television viewers of the Tour de France. Michael watched the Tour de Spain at night on his computer. 

    Afternoons included a swim in the river.

    At 1:30 am I woke to soft rustling and crunching noises. Had a rat had gotten in to nibble my chocolate bar?  I slipped out of bed to investigate and found the sounds were coming from outside. I stood in the cool breeze of the open window and strained to see and hear in the moonless night.

    From the rustling noises and footsteps I could localize two large beings roaming around in the dark directly below. The one on the left was concealed by the stirring bushes. My view of the one on the right was blocked by a balcony one floor below. That one was making loud hollow crunches, like bones being crushed in the teeth of a bear or large dog. CRACK! A Scops Owl tooted intermittently in the distance. CRUNCH! 

    My best guess was that I was listening to a pair wild boars that had descended from the forested hills above the abbey and waded across the river, but what was the crunching? In the morning, the ground by the patio was covered with large, cloven footprints, in the shade of a pair of bearing walnut trees.

    The next evening we wandered up the street for dessert but found the ice cream shop had closed. The owner, who puts trout in the river every spring, was gone for a week of boar hunting. Filling the larder and making Lagrasse safer for walnuts.

    Some pics from Gray’s sketchbook:

    We are off to the town of Arles on the Rhône, close to the Mediterranean.

  • “What is Paris like?”

    recent question from a friend upon learning we have spent a week in Paris.

    First impression: Paris has changed for the better since I was here last in the summer of 2004. Protected bike lanes line the major streets, and the streets now have far more bikes than cars. The bikes make no sound, so watch where you step. Lots of electric bikes are available for rent. The Metro, never more than a 10 minute walk from anywhere, is still fast, clean, quiet, and comes every 4 or 5 minutes. I cannot fathom why Miami’s Metro service is so noisy – it doesn’t have to be that way.

    My cousin Judy still has her atelier where she makes baroque stringed instruments. Her website is http://judithkraft.net – you’ll get a warning that the site is not secure because the web protocol is not https, but it is safe to visit.

    Our Home Exchange apartment in the 7th arrondissement is on a narrow, one lane street, just wide enough to squeeze one car down it without knocking down the sidewalk dining. People walk in the street, including parents with strollers, so no drivers go fast.

    Courtyard and apartment entrance at 25 Rue de Cotte, Paris. Watercolor by Gray Read.

    Our apartment itself is curious – narrow and vertical, spread over 4 levels. I manage to strike my head on the ceiling of the staircase entrances, while Gray has no problem. Otherwise it’s comfortable. It has a courtyard where I water the plants. A mouse ventured into the apartment, saw us and left promptly, not to be seen again.

    Nextdoor on one side is an excellent Vietnamese restaurant where the waitress wears a black tee-shirt that reads “Purdue Mom”, while nextdoor on the other side is a preschool “Petite Académie. The sign is particularly sweet.

    Up the street is the Troll Café where people hang out on the street drinking beer but leave no trash. Down the street is a covered market with excellent cheeses and meats at superb prices. Next to the covered market is an open air market. Peaches are ripe and aromatic. We ate a lot of peaches.

    The neighborhood compost container, airtight, is around the corner.  A short walk on the main street nearby takes us to a cash machine, a supermarket, pharmacy, a gluten-free bakery, and a park.

    At the lunch hour, the neighborhood park fills with groups of tweens from the nearby school, but you may not bring your rhinodoodle.

    Every evening, dining out is a new delightful experience. Good wine is inexpensive, so I have to be careful.

    Moules frites, with beer. Particularly good.

    One night we joined my cousin and her husband for a concert on a barge in a wide canal. An Armenian jazz pianist, Lucy Kahnyan, played her own compositions, accompanied by a fabulous percussionist whose name I cannot relocate (he was really good).

    French pleasure boaters weave erratically on the canal, so rental boats are enshrouded in fenders for the general welfare.

    We visited a new neighborhood of high-rises in the 17th arrondissement, each different and interesting, adorned with terrace gardens, green walls, solar panels, and paintings. At the ground level is an extensive park of trees, small playing fields, walking paths, cleverly designed playgrounds, a skateboard park, benches of course, and an extensive array of shallow ponds comprising an artificial wetland where we saw assorted waterbirds and carp.

    Children were everywhere, having fun with balls, climbing the innovative play equipment, watching the fish, and zooming around the kid-scale skateboard ramps and half-pipes on small scooters. As it came on 6 pm, children thinned out, replaced by joggers, home from work.

    Our last day we visited the National Picasso Museum, which houses Picasso’s private collection – his works that he wouldn’t or couldn’t sell and his own collection of works by Matisse and others.

    Now we have relocated to Lagrasse, a tiny medieval town in the south of France, staying with friends, former FIU colleagues, in their beautiful apartment with fortified stone walls four feet thick.

  • Yucatan 2: Playa Blanca Lodge

    Yucatan 2: Playa Blanca Lodge

    Flying over the sea from Miami to Cancún, I looked down on blobs and bands of sargassum “seaweed” floating towards the shore.

    This massive sargassum outbreak is a new phenomenon, postulated to result from fertilizer run-off in the Amazon areas that have been converted to agriculture.

    The resort cities across the Caribbean, including Miami, Cancún, and Tulum have been hit hard by sargassum washing up on the beaches, rotting and stinking. In Mexico, resorts are being protected by floating barriers designed to keep sargassum away. They do their best to intercept it at sea and haul it away before it can wash ashore. In the US sargassum has rights.

    I had one night in Cancún before taking a puddle-jumper south to Punta Pajaros in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere. The outfitter that organized the trip, Yellow Dog Fly Fishing, recommended the Marriott Courtyard Hotel as clean, inexpensive, and close to the airport. What the outfitter didn’t mention is that the coconut-ginger ice cream served in the hotel restaurant is over-the-moon good, the garden is full of birds, and a resident coatimundi snuffles around the garden by the pool. It’s a truly dandy place to stay overnight.

    From Cancún, we took a chartered single engine plane southward 45 minutes to an airstrip at Punta Pajaros. 

    From the airstrip, we were ferried across a lagoon in a panga, like an oversized dorry, and rode in the back of a truck 40 minutes down a dirt track to Playa Blanca Lodge. That’s four means of transport to get to the lodge.

    The instant we arrived at the lodge, a margarita appeared in my hand.

    The lodge recently upgraded to solar+battery power so the mini-split AC units kept humidity low in our cottages around the clock.

    More than nice enough for me. Comfortable beds too.

    Water from the well is noticeably salty, but we had fresh drinking water available in our rooms, and hot, brackish water for showering.

    You put your rods in the rack and they get spirited to the boats before you get there, and washed down with brackish water when you return to the lodge. I removed my reels at night and cleaned the lines and reels with a cup of fresh water.

    The normally white sand beach sported a thick band of sargassum, with more rolling in from the surf. The water remained clear along most shorelines, but on the shallower sections, sargassum rotted in the water, consuming dissolved oxygen, and tainting the water with stinky and toxic sulfur dioxide.

    Tarpon can breath air and so hunted baitfish disabled by the anoxic water. Frigatebirds did likewise.

    Gray Foxes are common on the grounds and surrounding woodland. In addition to the usual foxy fare of lizards, bugs, and baby birds, they munch on the assorted terrestrial crabs that wander the sandy grounds. 

    Our first night at the lodge, a fox stole one of two flip-flops off a cottage porch. The flip-flops belonged to Nate, a small animal vet from Idaho, who, in addition to flip-flops, had brought along his 20 year old son Calvin. 

    The next six days, quite a lot of fishing happened, some of which I’ll describe in subsequent posts. But for now, we’ll stick to the Lodge and its surrounds.

    This hermit crab is so well armored no fox is going to make a dent, and might get his nose pinched if it tried. The ubiquitous Great-tailed Grackle marches across the upper left corner of the photo.

    Ruins of a Mayan temple are a short walk down a mosquitoey trail through the woods.

    A fox trotted down the trail ahead of me before darting into the thick woods to check on his collection of kiped footwear. A member of the staff was lucky enough to spot a jaguar on the road one night. Seeing a jaguar would have upstaged catching a Permit.

    Our final evening we had a hermit crab race. The guests bet $20 each on which numbered crab of 30 would make it out of the sand ring first. My crab, #20, lost in the first elimination round. The ultimate winnings were contributed to the deserving staff who took such good care of us.

    Nate’s missing flip-flop was never found.

  • Yucatan 1: The Butterfly Effect

    Yucatan 1: The Butterfly Effect

    On the morning of 3 October 2025, I spotted a woman alone in the park across the street from our house. A pair of binoculars hung from her neck and she cradled a camera with a long lens. I always say ‘hi’ to birders in the park. Andrea Diamond, bubbling with excitement, told me she’d just spotted a Golden-winged Warbler, the first rare bird she had discovered on her own.  

    I came to know this elegant songbird during my childhood summers at a wildlife camp in West Virginia, but I had never seen one in Florida. Andrea relocated it quickly and I renewed my acquaintance with an old friend.

    Golden-winged Warbler in All American Park, South Miami. Photo by local birder Himanshu Gupta.

    For the next three days, South Florida’s birders flocked to the park and I became the Golden-winged Warbler Ambassador. Juan Valdez, one of the many birders who came to look for the warbler, also turned out to know the native plants. I learned that he works as an art museum curator and…wait… he fly fishes Biscayne Bay. Clearly my kind of guy.

    Since then I have entertained Juan through The Eye of the Cormorant and he has delighted me with photos and texts when his fly fishing skills produce a particularly splendid result.

    Juan with a bonefish caught on fly in Biscayne Bay.

    Fast forward to late June of this year. Juan phones me one evening to say that his friend Andy had booked a week at a fancy fly fishing lodge in the Yucatan, but cannot go. Andy offered the trip to Juan, but Juan can’t go either. In the unlikely event that I am free the second week of August the trip is mine.

    Playa Blanca Lodge is the sort  of place I read about online in the outfitter catalogs. I drool longingly over the descriptions, check the cost, then exhale and close the webpage. With this gifted package I just had to get myself from Miami to Cancún, cover one night in a hotel, and tip the lodge staff and fishing guides.

    I am definitely free the second week in August.

    Wow.

    Thanks Andy! Thanks Juan!

    Playa Blanca Lodge is situated in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Preserve on the Atlantic coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, located here on Google Maps.

    My family visited Sian Ka’an twelve years ago while on vacation in Tulum. The Biosphere Preserve is a cross between the Everglades and the Lower Florida Keys before people made such a mess of things here in Florida. The Mayans, likewise, tried their best to screw up the hydrology of Sian Ka’an, but equipped only with stone tools and manual labor for chipping canals out of the limestone bedrock, and no artificial fertilizer to aid their agriculture, the harms they wrought were far less extensive than here in Florida.

    The lower reaches of Sian Ka’an Biosphere include Espiritu Santo Bay, home to a healthy population of Permit(Trachinotus falcatus), a game fish in the jack family. Permit are wary, strong, and fast. The Permit is infamous among fly fishers for its capricious behavior, often rejecting a perfectly delivered fly and, on rare occasion, grabbing a fly from a botched cast. Permit fight hard, and have a large repertoire of escape tactics: scraping off a fly on a coral, crushing or straightening a fly’s hook, or grinding through the nylon leader on the floor of the bay.

    A local attorney friend has been trying to catch a Permit for years with no success.

    The most accomplished fisherman in my local fishing club writes: 
    “I have presented over 1000 flies to Permit… caught one (winning a tournament in 1988) and been skunked ever since!!! There is no way I haven’t found to lose a hooked Permit!” 

    Juan recently caught a nice Permit in Biscayne Bay. He is amazing.

    With only four years of fly fishing under my belt, I consider Permit to be out of my league. I’ve seen Permit in Biscayne Bay and the Keys, but I’ve never caught one on fly or even set my mind to trying. Last spring I followed a massive Permit in my kayak for half an hour, but despite my advancing as slowly as possible, the Permit would never let me approach closer than 125 feet.

    My benefactor, Andy, who gave me his trip reservation, sent me a brief note: 

    “Catch a permit for me.” 

    Uh oh.

    I ordered materials to tie Permit flies, producing an assortment of weighted crabby and shrimpy things in proven patterns recommended by the trip outfitter.

    My ties of the Raghead Crab fly.

    The weighted crab flies that Permit favor are hard to cast, so I would need serious practice.

    In the vain hope of not trashing my right hand by excessively casting my fast-action 9wt fly rod, I sought a rod of similar weight but with a softer action. The company I picked had 8/9wt rod blanks available, but none assembled in the size I wanted. I had never built out a rod blank before, but I figured why would Al Gore invent the internet if not for instructing a novice such as myself?

    Here’s the newly built rod, getting its epoxy coating on a rotating machine that prevents drips.

    I left for the airport a few hours after the epoxy dried.

  • Flipper

    Not the TV dolphin, a kayak flipper.

    My kayak fisherman buddy Cesar flipped over in a shallow rill along the edge of Florida Bay. Poor guy had no choice but to thrash around waist deep in shallow water and sticky mud groping for his lost fishing gear. He paddled back to the marina soaked, muddy, and completely humiliated. 

    It’s genuinely hard to flip a rotomolded fishing kayak in flat water. These craft have high primary stability and stick tight to the water’s surface. Nor is Cesar a beginner so I don’t think the flip was his fault. Two related stories suggest possible explanations.

    In September 2015, I took my wife Gray out for a birthday paddle in Biscayne Bay. I was a couple of boat lengths ahead as we passed over a bed of lush turtle grass in two feet of water. Out of nowhere, a wave rose up another two feet above the bay’s glassy surface, racing for the shore-side of my kayak. Some large and unseen creature was coming at me, and fast. For whatever protection it could afford, I lifted my paddle blade and held it firmly between me and whatever was coming at me beneath the wave. The wave jumped out of the bay and exploded over me. In the next instant the kayak and I flew up into the air. As we fell back into the bay, I executed a low-brace to stabilize the kayak. I had reflexively turned my face away from the shower, affording me the view of a bull manatee rocketing out the other side, bound for deeper water. I was completely soaked and gallons of seawater had joined me in the cockpit, but I was upright.

    From her ringside seat, Gray enjoyed the whole show.

    An unseen bull manatee had been grazing underwater near the mangrove shore and panicked when he saw my kayak cutting off his escape route. The exploding water resulted from the hard tail flip he made to shove his body under my kayak in water the same depth as his rotund body.

    Unlike my unfortunate friend, Cesar, I had two advantages that kept me from flipping over. First, I was paddling a touring kayak designed for rough water. Such a kayak has low primary stability and high secondary stability, meaning the hull rocks a bit on flat water but exerts a significant righting force that keeps it upright when tipped between 30 and 60  degrees. Second, I had a well-practiced low brace, the paddle maneuver that prevents a flip by controlling the hull’s rotational angle on the water. The low brace couldn’t prevent a soaking, but did keep me from going over.

    Since then I have watched out for the telltale wave of a kayak-panicked bull manatee in shallow water. Several times I have had to back-paddle hard to let a bull manatee barrel through to safety. Cow manatees are more relaxed around passing kayaks. Being smaller, perhaps they don’t feel so vulnerable in the shallows.

    But I can think of another manatee-related, possibility for how Cesar flipped in flat water.

    In 2022, I purchased a Hobie iTrek 11 for inshore fishing. It’s essentially an inflatable paddleboard with a lawn chair and pedal-operated flippers. An additional inflated tube along each side provides extra primary stability. This thing is not going to flip in anything short of breaking surf. The iTrek is oval in shape and gray underneath, like a manatee. 

    Manatees love the iTrek. Many times I have had to reel in my fishing line when cow manatees come up to snuggle. A few times the bow of the iTrek has risen mysteriously out of the water, elevated on the nose of an amorous bull. It’s disconcerting for sure, but unlike a kayak, the iTrek stays upright while balanced at one end on a manatee’s nose, with no athletic intervention by the paddler. One morning I gave up trying to fish because a bull manatee followed me everywhere I went, nudging the boat from underneath then backing away with a silly grin.

    Hardly the worst reason to miss out on the morning’s fishing, don’t you think? And definitely better than being flipped over like my buddy Cesar.

  • Publix relents

    I previously reported on the Publix supermarket chain’s policy to allow open carry of firearms in their stores.

    This week Publix slammed on the brakes and made a hard U-turn. On the sign posting store rules (wear cloths, no skateboards, roast your dog in the car, etc.) is a new one:

    “Publix kindly asks that only law enforcement openly carry firearms in our stores.”

    Why the change?

    My pal Glenn Terry credits the Gainesville Flying Pig Parade:

    I like to think he’s right, though the Miami Herald reports an alternative:

    “Last week, a person accidentally discharged a weapon at a Miramar Publix, and police said they had to conduct a safety sweep of the store.”

    Whatever the reason(s), I’m glad to see their capitulation as a small move back towards civil society.

    I still hate Publix for their effective lobbying to block single-use plastics regulation in Florida and their exploitation of farm workers. Until the company supports the environment and worker’s rights, we won’t do our weekly shopping at Publix. But maybe we’ll experience less risk of being shot if we run in to buy the occasional hard-to-find bag of raw peanuts for the backyard Blue Jays.