NOVEMBER 11
Our day in Santa Cruz was, once again, planned to be spent in the pursuit of wildlife watching, and, according to the maps we had, a lot of this could be done, we believed, on foot and within the boundaries of the town itself.
With this in mind, and having had a most satisfying breakfast at our hotel, we ventured forth with our tourist map to hand in the general direction of what was called "Neary Lagoon" and, having stood around for a while beside what we suspected to be the only roundabouts in the entire country loking a little confused, we decided that the municipal-looking children's play area near to the railroad tracks was probably not the way in, and headed up West Cliff Drive and along Bay Street instead, in what, initially at least, appeared to be a bit of a wrong direction.
However, running at the side of the street along much of Bay Street was "La Barranca Park" which was an peaceful open area with walkways and benches and trees and plants and flowerbeds, and, despite the passing traffic and the wire fence running around the perimeter of the water treatment works, we saw our first Hummingbirds of the morning and some large Raptors passing by overhead.
Eventually, more by luck than judgement (or map-reading skill), we came to a railway crossing and beyond it (and through another children's play area), we found the entrance to Neary Lagoon and ventured inside, not really sure what to expect, given all of the urban construction that was surrounding it, but we were more than pleasantly surprised to find a lovely little waterpark positively teeming with Ducks and Coots and several other water birds just there, right in the middle of all that industry and housing.
And, to be fair, it was all rather lovely, with all of the rather impressive boardwalks which had been constructed, just to walk around and see all of the wildlife, and we stayed for quite some time as it turned out to be a pretty peaceful haven that several of the local population seemed to use as a convenient "cut through" on their way across town, although we did wonder just how many of them ever just stop and spend some time just enjoying the place itself in such a "busy, busy" culture.
Naturally, when we emerged at the other side, we found ourselves at the back of the very same municipal-looking children's play area that we'd decided to dismiss earlier on with a confident "Well, it couldn't possibly be there...!" which only goes to show, I suppose, just how very dependent upon the Sat-Nav I'd become...
Or that the signage in any foreign country makes perfectly good sense to the local population, but is baffling and confusing to everybody else...
After a brief yet well-timed return to our hotel (because it turned out that they'd accidentally set our key cards for one day instead of two which might have caused problems...), we set off in the car to the UCSC Arboretum which was somewwhere my Beloved had been particularly eager to see, given that it housed areas containing plants from several nations including Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and promised much in the potential spotting of Hummingbirds.
And with that, it really did not disappoint.
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