Kids and Sea-Lions

Well, this post is about a week overdue, I'm afraid. (Where have I been all this time, anyway?!) Sorry about that!
Last week, the girls' abuelitos were here for a few days, bringing with them our good friends Angie and Joella, and Joella's two little girls, Wully and Alexipooch. Nicknames.
Anyway, Jose and Gloria took us ladies and kiddos to the port to see the sea-lions. Unfortunately, of the four cameras only Luchi's had batteries, and they didn't last very long. Grrr....
But PTL, we got some shots anyway. Here they are:

Wully (front), Raff, and Floppy (back)--3-year-olds

Abuela Gloria with Floppy

Bebe, Mumsy, Abuelita, Floppy, and Abuelito Jose

Abuela Gloria with monkey-baby

(she didn't take to her grandparents; naughty naughty)

Sleeping away...

Dead Sea Lion

Believe it or not, that piece of red meat is a neck wound on a great brown hairy sea-monster. It was directly below where we were behind a chain-link fence; I spotted it and everyone came running. It's a little hard to see clearly in the pic, but you can see the creature's nose on the left, and the top of its great dead body, with that magnificent rotting wound on top. Would've made a barbecue for an army... heheh

Here are the kids climbing the fence trying to get a better view. Wully is in front of two more sealions, sorry bout that. We were disappointed not to see very many, because normally this area was so thick with massive sealions lounging, fighting and flopping around on the rocks, but besides the dead one in the last pic (and yes, it actually was dead), there were only two or three others, and 4 little seals swimming merrily in the water.

Look closely between Floppy's right hand and face--there a brown mass there that actually was a sleeping sealion. He was too far away to get a close-up pic.

Ah, there they are. See those weird little outcroppings on the beach? Seals and sea-lions--some of them over 4 meters long, no kidding. Those beasts are gigantic. Apparently they decided to move from the crowded rocks to this nice stretch of beach about a kilometer down the coast. We had been rather disappointedly heading back to the van, when an old fellow came by on his bike and laughed, and said the creatures had moved.

We all hopped back into the van, full of hope, and found them here.--No fence between us, but with signs all over the place instructing us not to approach them, because these wild creatures are dangerous, and are under the observation of a wildlife reserve. Most of them are actually branded, imagine that. We saw huge numbers branded onto the backs of a few of them, as they swam near the docks later on. I made an estimative count of the ones on the beach--there were more than two hundred, stretched out over about half a kilometer of beach. Seals and sea lions, looking like great monstrous slugs.

OOoooh the awesomest thing was to watch them fight, heheh. Well, after this Luchi's battery died, and so you'll just have to take my word about the marvelous ships and boats and stuff we saw later at the port. Too bad, and ta-tah for now!