Having just returned from my first vacation in a very long time—and some much-needed Spanish practice—I thought I’d share some photographs. I was visiting Key Biscayne and South Beach (Miami Beach), Florida (and managed to leave one day into Florida’s recent wicked cold spell). I’ll spare you the beach photos and substitute a tour of the local fauna (and a little flora, for good measure):

One slightly sad point: the beautiful iguanas (green iguanas to be precise) you see above are the target of serious resident-led zoocide (hereptocide?). Evidently, these beautiful and utterly harmless but nonetheless exogenous creatures leave droppings in inconvenient places, and this causes them to attract the ire of local residents. (They come out around 11:00am every day to sun themselves and raise their body temperatures; they generally head “home” around 3:00pm.) At least for this tourist, getting a chance to see a few “wild” iguanas while I was relaxing was a lot of fun, and I can’t imagine why anybody would begrudge them their sun-bathing. Bah Humbug!