We spent the morning with the flamingos, and when I say morning, breakfast was at 5:00 AM, and we were loaded onto the zodiacs by 6:00 AM to get there nice and early (do you feel like you’ve already read this part at least 4 times….well, it’s because you have…every…single….morning……sigh). I am definitely not making this a permanent part of my routine when we get home. We were the only ship in the area, photographers can be such a wacky bunch.

Flamingos can be such fashionistas. We were there for over an hour and a half and they spent the whole time performing their morning beautification rituals. No frisky business to be seen this morning, although that would be interesting to witness. It was a bit surreal to see these creatures in the wild, after spending so much time photographing them in the zoo. At one point as I started walking down the shore to get a better angle on them, they started walking with me, just 10 feet away. Imagine that, a place on earth where I can take a morning stroll with flamingos.

At one point five of them walked from one end of the lagoon to the other end, stood on shore and then all looked in the same direction. We thought this was the “cleared for takeoff” signal. At the ready, there were 15 photographers, standing still with large heavy cameras up to eyeballs just waiting for the moment when they would fly. And then they started preening….again. I guess they still live in a time when air travel is glamorous and you have to make sure you look your best. The leader started to walk into the water and we all uttered a collective “oh no!” as cameras were lowered. Then the flamingos turned around and walked back on shore, cameras were raised, then reversed course and went into the water, cameras lowered, and this little dance went on until we decided to move on and walk to the beach. Seconds after arriving at the beach they flew over us and another collective “oh no” was sounded. Wildlife, especially bird photography, takes a thousand times more patience than I have.

Oh, in other breaking news, we have officially crossed the equator twice in a boat which makes us shellbacks. Which is nice, because people who don’t cross the equator in a boat are called pollywogs, or wogs for short, and that is a very unattractive status symbol if it is one.

There is even a “cross the equator by boat” status program. You can be a golden shellback, and/or an emerald shellback. And if you are wondering how you can become an elite member of this club, it is a lot harder than you may guess.

A golden shellback is someone who crosses the equator at the 180 meridian which is the international dateline. It is the magical intersection between the horizontal equator and the vertical meridian date line located at somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. When I asked Peter precisely where, he gave me a shrug and said “that’s all I got”. I may have to turn to the ChatMan from now on to answer all my ridiculous questions, he never gives me any attitude.

Moving on, an emerald shellback, also known as a royal shellback or a diamond shellback, (there are three names for this status) is shellback who crosses the equator at the prime or zero meridian. The prime meridian runs through the equator on the other side of the world in the Atlantic Ocean. For those of you who are fascinated by this topic and want to know precisely where this occurs, it is in the Gulf of Guinea. But what I really want to know, is if you gain these awesome status’ are you rewarded in jewels?