climate redux

So again: the landscape here is sort of the Serengeti meets Mars. And Mars wins, almost completely. They say deserts, but only for the dry: it's all gravel and rubble and the occasional goat-harassed acacia.

This place is to deserts as Maine is to beaches: sorry, no sand, only rocks.

I actually wanted to say "the occasional goat-mauled acacia," since how often do you get to say "goat-mauled" in a reasonably happy context? But the acacias actually look to hold their own pretty well against the hard-bitten browsers of this rocky land. Soft little fresh foliage right now, at this time of year---but guarded by lots of spiky pointy thorny ouchsomeness. This is not a desert to go barefoot in. And a snooze under a tree requires some careful preparatory cleanup.

It's also not a desert to go barefoot in because the rocks will burn your feet. Both times I've been to the beach, flameriffic sole-scorching sand has been de rigeur, requiring the attendant "Ah! Ooh! Ow! Eee!"-ing sprint down to the wetsand zone. Water's nice here: prettty warm, but cool enough to be pleasant against the hot dry air. Salty, too: briny enough to keep even a low body-fat lad like myself (well, methinks that BMI is a-changin' a bit now) afloat with no effort at all. I guess this makes sense: shallow hot coastal water, with little to no fresh river input to dilute it. Not exactly the Dead Sea, but closer to it than the frigid and thus saliently less salty sloshage of my northeastern home waters.