2018 Caribbean Cruise - Ft. Lauderdale - Saturday, November 24, 2018

Today's adventure took us to the Anne Kolbe Nature Center which is part of the West Lake Park, less than a mile down the road from our hotel.  West Lake Park consists of estuaries (lakes that have access to the ocean and so are brackish).  Mangroves (trees that live in water) dominate the scenery in this park.  The Anne Kolbe Nature Center offers exhibits about the mangroves and ocean life, has several walking trails, an observation tower, and offers nature guided boat tours.

Before we even made it to the nature center, we stumbled across these adorable green lizards who had made this beautiful red plant their home.

We were two of six who took the 10:40 a.m. boat tour with Captain Ed.  On the tour we saw red, white, and black mangroves, root crabs, mangrove tree crabs, white ibises, osprey, and a tern.

Root Crab (red creature on the root right near the water)

white ibis near the water line

tern (an ocean bird that made it's way into the estuaries)

mangrove tree crabs on the trunk of this tree

We then wandered the mud flat trail.

See the small lizard with the red head in the center of the photo

These next few photos and video are of a great egret, usually a bird easily spooked so we were amazed at how long we were able to watch him. 

(Video taken by my husband)

The observation tower gave great views of the whole park, Ft. Lauderdale, and the ocean.  If you looked carefully you could even see a couple of cruise ships parked at Port Everglades.

We also checked out the lake observation trail and the trail to the fishing pier.

At 2:00 p.m., they had a talk and feeding at their aquariums in the nature center so we stopped by to watch them feed fish native to the mangroves as well as some other fun saltwater fish like the Florida Spiny Lobster and star fish.  As we headed out of the park, we took just a small part of the south trail which gave us views of the intracoastal waterway before heading back to the hotel.

Something doesn't look quite right in this picture...

I believe this is a juvenile white ibis.

Our late lunch/early dinner was delivery pizza from the Cyber Pizza Cafe which was pretty good.  We spent some time in the evening relaxing by the side of the pool where I worked on my blog as my husband enjoyed youtube videos.  It was a bit surreal to be sitting poolside in late November, under palm trees after sunset, wearing our light, summer clothes.

Tomorrow we board the ship.