One of the things that has had me baffled since my arrival has been what looks like designs drawn in the sand. At first I thought that some creative kid or kids had spent the day doing abstract art classes In the sand, but there was far too much to have been done by kids…even entire art schools couldn’t have managed the volume.
Tonight, mystery solved. The past few days, the tide has been super low. The small boat that is moored out in front of the resort ends up sitting in the midst of a sea of sand at the tide’s lowest point. And today those creative works of sand art covered at least half of the entire beach. It called for a closer look…
On my way to dinner tonight, I stopped and spent some time examining  the designs up close. The first thing I noticed was a telltale hole more or less at the centre of each. Then I noticed the movement…subtle, but definitely something. Yup…crabs. Teeny, tiny, itsy bitsy crabbies doing monumental excavation work, rolling the sand into uniform balls, heaving them out of their holes, moving the balls a considerable distance.
They’re shy little critters, so it took some time with me standing there not daring to breathe before the guy I was watching cautiously resumed his work. Isn’t nature grand?
Of course, now that I know there are millions of these little guys under the surface, it will be difficult to walk the beach without feeling a tad guilty about all the damage I’m doing to their tunnel system. Ignorance was bliss!
Dinner tonight on the beach at a great little spot called Black Coral. There couldn’t be a better place to watch the sun go down.
Nitey-nite!