Today, we were anchored in the Bay of Pillars – this matched our anchorages last week for beauty.  And, the sunshine and warm temperatures didn’t hurt.  We were signed up for two activities today, and both of us slept in until just before breakfast time.  Happy Birthday, Lou!

The water was once again very still, and Lou took advantage to capture a photo of one of the many jellyfish floating by the boat:

We were scheduled for the 9 o’clock shore walk with Alison (lucky Alison – she ended up being our guide for many of the first two week’s activities.  We enjoyed her enthusiasm and knowledge – she was always smiling).  On the way over to the shore for our walk, we spotted an otter. A very noisy otter – he was busy eating and ignored us; Otters can eat up to 25% of their weight in a day.

The assignment for our Shore Walk was to walk around and look for interesting things.  We collected “stuff” or pointed it out, and Alison would tell us about it.   All of our treasures were restored to their natural habitat after show & tell – no slimy creatures were harmed during this event.  It was surprising just how many tiny creatures and interesting plants and stuff you can find when you’re looking for it.  Lou was into this – I found it interesting, but am not that crazy about the invertebrate world or slimy things.

Here are some photos from our shore walk:

Lou took his eye off the beach and caught an eagle flying overhead – don’t ask what it’s carrying.  We figured out it’s another Circle-of-Life thing.  One of the photos in the gallery shows an eagle on a nest – we still didn’t have any luck spotting the eaglets, maybe it was too early in the spring for them to be out.

On the way back to the ship, Bob did a few turns to see if we could find the otters again – this one popped up in the distance. If you look closely, you can kind of see this is a mama with a baby on it’s chest.

Chris is demonstrating his expertise with the kayak, and getting some exercise at the same time:

Our next activity (if you’re keeping track, this is our second event of the day – pretty good for us) was at 2pm.  Bob was in charge of us as we set out on the afternoon Skiff Adventure.  Bless his heart, he really did search high and low for a bear, but no luck.  It turned out even better; you guessed it, more otters.

This nosy guy kept coming close to the skiff and popping up his head to look at us, and we did see more than otters as we cruised around the bay – and the scenery was once again stunning:

We also saw some Canadian Geese:

And the beautiful scenery:

It was about time to go back to the ship when we spotted another otter:

Oh, wow, this was a highlight for me (even Lou cracked a smile).  This was one of our favorite days from the trip – a nice walk along the shore, otters, and beautiful scenery.  What’s not to like?  And, Lou had a surprise when we got back – there was a bottle of wine waiting for him in our cabin, a birthday gift from some of the staff.  This was very nice, and is an advantage to doing multiple weeks with the same crew – you do get to know people better.

We topped off the day by dining with our new friends from Australia, and the day’s not over yet – this gorgeous day turned into an awesome evening and we had one of our best sunsets of the trip. A nice way to finish up Lou’s birthday.