On an Earthwatch expedition to Tobacco Cay, Belize, Cent. America, May 1997. Here I am looking at tube sponges while snorkeling on the barrier reef.

Zanzibar tingatinga shop

Zanzibar sunset

Zanzibar door in Stone Town

Students studying under "learning tree" at the
Univ. of Dar es Salaam

Leaving Ireland, I traveled to Italy for two weeks, spending most of my time in the picturesque town of Santa Margherita on the Ligurian coast. Using S. Margherita as a base, I attended the VIth International Sponge Conference in nearby Rapallo, and hiked many of the trails that ran both East and West along the very scenic Ligurian coast. East of Rapallo is the Cinque de Terre, with coastal hiking trails connecting the five lovely villages of Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso. The hike from Riomaggiore to Monterosso, stopping for about 20 minutes of brief exploration at each village, took a total of about 6 hours. From S. Margherita I also hiked West to beautiful Portofino and from there through the mountains to the isolated coastal village of San Fruttuoso. While in Italy I visited Genoa and toured the new aquarium there, one of the largest in Europe. I also spent several days exploring Milan. I attended a stirring performance of "Lucrezia Borgia" at La Scala, and visited the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, famous for its wall painting of Il Cenacolo, The Last Supper by De Vinci, which I found most awe-inspiring.

Earthwatch volunteers, Doris Neilson and I

In May 2004 twelve Coe students and I traveled to Belize during Coe’s May Term. This was my fifth trip to beautiful Tobacco Caye. We stayed at Tobacco Cay Lodge for 2 weeks and learned about the biology of the Belizean barrier reef while carrying out several different research projects on chitons, emerald crabs, and commensalistic shrimp that live inside sponges. Meals at the lodge were always excellent and filling (see photo), and before returning to Iowa we traveled to the Mayan ruins at Xunantunich (see photo).

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In August 2004 the college sponsored a trip to the Manu Biosphere Reserve in the Peruvian amazon for Coe alumni. The trip was led by Coe alum and former student Dave Davenport who has established his own ecotour company Ecoquest Travel. Dave is both President and chief zoologist at Ecoquest and provided my daughter Susan and I, along with Coe alums Tara Nickel and Heidi Steele, an excellent and highly educating and entertaining expedition. While in Manu we stayed at two excellent lodges, Manu Cloud Forest Lodge in the cloud forest and Manu Lodge (see photo) in the Amazon basin. For anyone interested in a well-organized ecotour with a highly knowledgeable guide and comfortable accomodations to a remote region of the world I can highly recommend EcoQuest Tours operated by Dave and his sister Kathy. Contact them at info@ecoquesttravel.net

In October-November 2004 I traveled to the countries of Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. In the Czech Republic I visited Prague and Kutna Hora, and stayed for 10 days at Ostrava where I collaborated with my colleague and friend Dr. Zdenek Duris, a crustacean specialist who teachs at the University of Ostrava. Ostrava doesn’t have the tourist appeal of Prague, but it does have a very large main square (see photo). At his office at the university Zdenek and I studied the different commensalistic shrimp species the Coe students and I had collected in Belize (see photos). We also had opportunity to travel in the scenic countryside of Northern Moravia where Zdenek has a country home. We hiked in the Beskydy mountains and traveled to the picturesque village of Stramberk (see photo), the location of a cave where Neanderthal remains and artifacts have been recovered.

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In June 2005 I traveled to Quito, Ecuador with my wife Sharon and daughter Susan.  There we met my friend Stan Cobb and members of his extended family and all 16 of us had a week tour of the Galapagos Islands aboard the sailing vessel Cachelote.  We visited 9 of the Galapagos Islands, 5 more than Charles Darwin was able to visit during his explorations of the islands in Sept-Oct of 1835.  The Galapagos experience was awesome, one of the most uniquely different trips in my experience.  We first landed on Hood Island (see photo).  Seeing marine iguanas (see photo), blue-footed boobies (see photo), sea lions, albatross, and many other animals from only several feet away was a wonderful experience.  Each island we visited had its own unique character and I found Hood Island particularly beautiful. On Santa Cruz island we were able to see some of the giant tortoises (see photo) which so impressed Darwin and for which the islands are named.  Fernandina is the most recently formed of the Galapagos Islands which, like the Hawaiian Islands, lie above a “hot spot” in the earths crust and are being formed from volcanic action at a fault line beneath the ocean.  Fernandina provided me one of the most memorable natural spectacles I have ever witnessed … the sight of hundreds of marine iquanas swimming ashore to bask on the dark volcanic rocks after having fed on marine algae below the water.  What an almost prehistoric sight to see these iguanas, wonderfully adapted to an aquatic lifestyle, swimming ashore in large numbers to bask on the rocks and elevate their body temperature after swimming in cold water.  On Fernandina, I was also able to get close and personal with a land iguana (see photo).  One can understand why his Galapagos visit so impressed Darwin and set his “brain spinning”.  From Fernandina one can look across to Isabella, the largest of the Galapagos Islands, and see Mt. Darwin (see photo), one of five mountains on the islands and named to honor one of the greatest scientists who ever lived.

In July 2005, after my visit to the Galapagos Islands, I traveled to Scotland and England.  The University of Glascow in Scotland was the venue for the 6th International Crustacean Congress.

There I presented a paper on my study of the polychaete worm Chaetopterus sp, a unique worm that constructs a U-shaped parchment tube that often provides a home to two different species of small crabs, the pea crab Pinnixa chaetopterana and the anomuran Polyonyx gibbesi. I studied this worm-crab association for 7 years (1999-2005) on Dog Island, Florida in the N. Gulf of Mexico. The two chimneys of the worms U-shaped tube can easily be located projecting above the sand in the intertidal zone at low tide (see photos), and the tubes can be easily excavated from the sand without fear of the worm or any resident crabs escaping. In some years the tubes are plentiful (see photo). Tubes typically have crabs of one of the two species, usually a pair, but no tube contains adult crabs of both species. In the month of January, many of the adult female crabs are ovigerous (carrying eggs), such as the adult female Polyonyx gibbesi shown in the photo.

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In England I visited several places which have a connection to Charles Darwin, a scientist and human being who I greatly admire.  I visited the lovely city of Shrewsbury, Darwin’s birthplace.  Peter Boyd of the Shrewsbury Museum gave me a personal tour of Shrewsbury and I was able to visit The Mount, the home of Robert Darwin and boyhood home of his famous son Charles.  A special highlight was to be able to see “the toolshed at the bottom of the garden” (see photo) where the young Darwin investigated the animals and plants that he collected as a young boy.  Robert Darwin’s gardens are now part of a housing estate and the toolshed is now part of the private property of a homeowner who, thankfully, is preserving the toolshed because of its historical significance.  Peter and I also visited Shrewsbury Castle, the grave of Robert Darwin, and the Darwin statue (see photo) in front of the city library, once the school that Charles Darwin attended as a young boy.  From Shrewsbury I traveled to the little village of Downe in Kent.  I stayed 3 days in the village lodged in a guest room above the George and Dragon pub (see photo).  I spent one day at Down House where Darwin lived the last 40 years of his life and walked several times around Darwin’s Sandwalk (see photo).  Darwin was an avid walker and walked nearly every day on the Sandwalk, his “thinking path”.  While in Downe I visited St Mary’s churchyard where Emma Darwin (wife of Charles) and Erasmus Darwin (brother of Charles) are buried (see photo) and I hiked many of the public footpaths in the Kent countryside, visiting Orchis Bank (see photo) and other places visited by the great scientist on his daily walks.

In October 2005 I returned to Tobacco Cay, Belize, one of my favorite destinations.  I was accompanied by my friend Neil Bernstein, Prof. of Biology at Mt. Mercy College.  For one week Neil and I collected small chitons and several different species of sponges, which we then examined for the presence of small species of shrimp. Our week-long research trip was shortened by the approach of Hurricane Wilma and we were forced to evacuate the island and stay in the mainland town of Dangriga for two days.  But, we had 6 days on lovely Tobacco Caye, a small island located just behind the reef crest and off the normal well-beaten tourist track.  Some of the sponges that we studied were the sponge species that overgrow mangrove roots.  We focused on two of the most common sponges that we found overgrowing the roots, the vivid orange fire sponge, Tedania ignis, and the greenish-blue conical-shaped sponge Lissodendoryx sp. (see photo).  Both kinds of sponges were found to provide shelter for an interesting assemblage of small commensalistic shrimp belonging to the families Alpheidae and Palaemonidae (Pontoniinae), in addition to other small marine animals.

       

In November 2005 I visited St. Petersburg, Russia, to spend a week with my host Prof. Boris Sirenko at the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Scientists.  The Zoological Institute, located on Vasilevsky Island,  houses an impressive array of natural history exhibits, including rarely seen material like entire mammoths found frozen in ice or mud, skeletons of the extinct Stellar’s sea cow, or specimens of the extinct Tasmanian wolf (see photo).  St. Petersburg is a spectacular city whose sights cannot help but impress visitors.  I was especially impressed by my visit to the Winter Palace and the adjoining Hermitage (see photo) which houses one of the largest collections of art and other treasures in the world, and the wonderfully ornate Cathedral of the Sacred Blood (see photos), built in an amazingly short time over the exact spot where Czar Alexander II was killed by a terrorist.  The cathedral, both inside and outside, impresses with its ornate domes, lovely tile mosaics, and wide variety of precious stones.

From Russia I traveled to Ostrava, third largest city in the Czech Republic where I resumed my research collaboration with my friend Prof. Zdenek Duris at the University of Ostrava.  When we were not identifying the shrimp found living inside sponges from Belize, we traveled to several places in the Northern Moravian countryside, including the touristy facilities at Mt. Radnost in the Beskydy Mountains (see photo) and the attractive Moravian town of Hukvaldy, birthplace of the Czech composer Janacek.  Hukvaldy is the location of Hukvaldy Castle, one of the oldest (1240) and largest castles in the Czech Republic. It was a beautiful day, and Zdenek and I enjoyed our hike up to the castle, located atop a hill and surrounded by large and lovely beech trees (see photo).

Leaving Ostrava I traveled to Prague, a frequent destination and a city filled with old world charm and a wealth of cultural venues, including three opera houses.  When not attending operas I renewed my acquaintance of this lovely city full days spent walking.  Everyone who has visited Prague leaves with memories of its beautiful castle on the hill, overlooking the river Vlatava and Charles Bridge (see photo).  From the Strahovsky monastary and church high above the city, one gets a superb view of Prague Castle and the city beyond (see photo).  On this trip I re-visited many of my favorite places, including the historic Jewish Quarter, with the oldest jewish cemetary in Europe (oldest grave = 1434) and Pinkus synagogue (see photo), and the beautiful Loreta church (see photo)

In June of 2006 I returned to the barrier reef at Tobacco Caye, Belize for the 7th time, accompanied by 4 Coe students, 7 students from Knox College and their teacher Professor of Biology Linda Dybas, and two colleagues from the University of Ostrava in the Czech Republic, Professor Zdenek Duris and his graduate student and research assistant Ivona Horka. During our two weeks on Tobacco Caye we collected sponges from deep water, and from both sea grass and mangrove lagoons and then examined them for the presence of small shrimp commensals. We also collected chitons and sipunculids for further study and went snorkeling on a daily basis, observing the wide diversity of fishes and marine invertebrates present on the Belizean barrier reef. Prof. Duris and Ivona extensively documented the trip and the species seen with photographs and videos, including film footage of whale sharks.

In August/September 2006 I traveled to the British Isles and Ireland for a four week visit. Using a Britrail pass I visited different locations in Britain. At Penzance in Cornwall I hiked a section of the Cornish coast path and while staying with friends at Kingswear in Devon I hiked the lovely stretch of Devon coast path from Brixham to Dartmouth and spent a day hiking on Dartmoor (see photo). I visited Laycock, considered one of the most picturesque villages in England (see photo), filming site of some of the Harry Potter movies, and returned to the lovely city of Shrewsbury, birthplace of Charles Darwin. I visited Tenby, a picturesque town on the south Welsh coast (see photo) and spent several days at isolated Caldey Abbey (see photo), a cistercian monastary on Caldey Island, located off the coast from Tenby. A major purpose of my trip was to participate in my 3rd Earthwatch Expedition, this one involving a study of basking sharks in the area of the Scottish Inner Hebrides. There were 5 of us on the Earthwatch team (see photo), and we rendezvoud in Arisaig, a coastal village in Western Scottish. There we boarded the 11.4 m sailing vessel Forever Changes, and met Colin Speedie, the captain and principal investigator of the project, and his first mate Louise. For five days we sailed the Inner Hebrides, anchoring nightly at four of its lovely islands -- Coll, Canna (see photo), Eigg (see photo), and Rhum. Aboard the boat we performed transect surveys, took plankton samples, and documented the location of all marine mammals we encountered. On Day 4 we had the thrill of seeing several basking sharks (see photo), the second largest fish in the ocean, feeding at the surface near the boat.

When the expedition ended, I traveled by train to Holyhead and took an Irish Ferry to Dublin, where I spent 10 days visiting Ireland and my third cousin Linda Hawkins and her husband Mike. I explored Dublin, attended a number of plays and recitals, and then traveled to Mt. Melleray Abbey, a cistercian monastary located at the foothills of the lovely Knockmealdown Mountains in county Waterford. I took a taxi from Fermoy to Cappoquin then walked 8 km through beautiful countryside (see photo) to the monastary. This was my third visit to Mt. Melleray and I stayed there on retreat for three days, enjoying the quiet contemplative atmosphere of the monastary and the surrounding countryside. Before leaving I climbed to the cross on the hillside above the monastary. In August Ireland’s hills are ablaze with blooming gorse and heather (see photo).

Hound Tor on Dartmoor	Shop in Laycock
Tenby Harbor at low tide	Caldey Abbey on Caldey Island
Earthwatch Team	Isle of Canna
Eigg children	Basking shark
Cappoquin hayfield	Melleray cross

In June 2007 my book African Odyssey was published by iUniverse (www.iuniverse.com  ISBN: 978-0-595-44017-7).  The book relates my experiences as a science teacher in Nigeria in the Peace Corps in the 60’s, and some of my adventurous travels throughout Nigeria and to various locales and national parks in East Africa.

African Odyssey by Floyd Sandford

Also in June 2007 my wife Sharon and I traveled to Egypt with General Tours Inc. We began by taking a full day to explore populous and traffic-crazy Cairo.  We went to the Citadel and watched a call to prayers at Mohammed Ali Mosque, visited the oldest mosque in Cairo (Amr ibn Elaas, 650 AD), and wandered through the huge Khan El Khalili bazaar, searching for bellydance outfits. On the next day we visited the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza, the last remaining of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Both the pyramids and the camel ride were memorable, but I was even more impressed by the solar boat found buried in a underground chamber at the base of one of the pyramids. Pharoah Khafre had a wonderful football field length wooden boat constructed for his travels in the afterlife. From Giza we drove to the step pyramid of the 3rd dynasty pharoah Djoser, and then on to the site of ancient Memphis.

Then we flew to Luxor and visited the temples at Luxor and Karnak, the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, and the Colossi of Memnon.  For me, one of the most awesome sights of my Egypt travels was experiencing Karnak Temple, the largest temple in ancient Egypt.  The huge cavernous hall with its 134 massive columns covered with hieroglyphs and cartouches, the towering obelisks, the paintings with the original colors still visible after being exposed to the elements for thousands of years --- a truly impressive spectacle.  At Luxor we boarded the Radames II for a four day cruise South up the Nile to Aswan.  Viewing the pastoral Nile bank scenes one couldn’t help be struck by the stark contrast of a ribbon of irrigated green on both banks, with the harsh arid desert beyond.  On the cruise we stopped to tour the Temple at Edfu and the Temple at Kom Ombo on the banks of the Nile. Kom Ombo is a Greco-Roman style temple dedicated jointly to two gods of ancient Egypt - Horus, and the crocodile god Sobek.

Upon arrival in the attractive city of Aswan, we toured the city, visited spice shops and perfumeries, explored Philae Temple, drove to the top of the high Aswan dam, then boarded a boat for a short trip on the Nile to visit a Nubian village, followed by a short sail in a falucca in Aswan harbor. In Aswan we visited a granite quarry to see the Unfinished Obelisk.  Seeing the huge obelisk was wonderfully thought-provoking.  How did the ancient Egyptians carve these huge granite obelisks from solid bedrock? Remove and transport them from the quarry? Transport them to other locations up or down the Nile? And then finally erect them at some faraway temple, such as those at Luxor and Karnak?

Leaving Aswan we flew further south to Abu Simbel to visit the Temple of Pharoah Ramses II, and the nearby temple of his favorite wife, Queen  Neferteri.  The original temples were located in a location that was to be flooded by Lake Nassar, a huge lake created by the building of the high dam at Aswan.  It took years to move the temples, piece by piece, to their current location, an amazing feat of engineering.  From Abu Simbel we flew back to Cairo for the night, then the following morning left by car to visit the lovely city of Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast.

Khan El Khalili bazaar	Solar boat at Giza Pyramids
Nile bank scene	Sobek at Kom Ombo
Unfinished obelisk at Aswan	Aswan spice shop
Nubian village doorway	Temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel

In July 07 my daughter Susan and I traveled to New Zealand and Australia for three weeks.  We began by exploring Auckland on the North Island of New Zealand.  Then we traveled north to the picturesque coastal town of Paihia where we spent a full day on a guided walk in the Puketi forest.  We experienced the lush vegetation in this beautiful rain forest and marvelled at the huge Kauri trees, the second largest trees on the planet.  On the following day we took a scenic boat trip to Cape Brett and the Hole in the Rock.  On the way we passed through a pod of killer whales (Orca) and stopped to watch them hunting. After briefly visiting Urapukapuka Island we returned to beautiful Paihia.
  Our next stop, after returning to Auckland, was Waitomo. There we explored the Black Labyrinth, tubing through Ruakuri Cave, going over waterfalls, seeing the glowworms on the cave’s ceiling.  From Waitomo we traveled to Rotorua and attended a Maori cultural evening. On the next day we hiked through a “rainforest primeval”, the lush Whirinaki Forest Park.  On our third day in Rotorua we saw mud pots, hot pools, geysers, and the world’s largest hot spring in the Waimangu thermal valley.  Then we helicoptered over dormant Mt. Terawera volcano, in Rotorua’s hottest geothermal park, and took a wild jet boat ride up a river.

After returning to Auckland for a day, we flew to Adelaide, Australia.  We spent several days in lovely Adelaide, visiting the Cleland Wildlife Reserve and interacting with all the native Australian animals there (e.g. dingos, wombats, koalas). On another day we took an all-day guided tour of the nearby Fleurieu peninsula.  From Adelaide, we flew to Kingscote on nearby Kangaroo Island, where we were met my Dr. Peggy Rismiller, the Prinicipal Investigator of the Earthwatch expedition “Echidnas and gowannas of Kangaroo Island”.  This was my 4th Earthwatch expedition, and like all others previous it was a wonderful experience.  Stationed at the Pelican Lagoon Reserve Station on lovely Kangaroo Island, the members of our 7-member Earthwatch team studied echidnas and gowannas, using radio-tracking equipment.  During our stay we became familian with GPS, compass reading, habitat types, and the names of native vegetation, and had close up and personal encounters with some of the island’s wildlife, including possums, great gray kangaroos, and tammer wallabys. Everyone on the Earthwatch Team fell for Ruby, the friendly great gray kangaroo matriarch. One afternoon, we visited other parts of the island, including several beachs with lovely Aeolianian rock formations, nesting little penquins (Udyptyla), or Southern sea lions.

Puketi Forest	Maori cultural show in Rotorua
Koala	Kangaroo Island beach
Ruby, the great gray kangaroo	Whirinaki forest waterfall

With retirement comes a greater degree of freedom to spend one's time involved in pursuits that are often more physically demanding and emotionally satisfying.  Now that I’m freed of some of my previous restaints associated with the under-appreciated and over-worked career of teaching in a small college, I am spending more time at my cabin and acreage in the lovely rolling hills of NE Iowa, an area in the northeast corner of the state called the “driftless zone”, a region of Iowa that was not covered by the last period of glaciers. The region is characterized by limestone bluff outcroppings and many forests – an all too infrequent sight in the state of Iowa, the state with the dubious distinction of  showing the most altered natural habitats from that which originally existed before the European settlers arrived. Iowa has seen its vast and lovely tall grass prairie heritage ravaged and morphed by humans into endless expanses of corn and soybeans.  At my acreage, 23 acres of which are in the Forest Reserve Program, I work to increase biodiversity and create habitat for wildlife --- those other living entities of Planet Earth that have no voice and are bulldozed over, driven out, or run over by the exploding human population and the metastasizing cancer we humans euphemistically refer to as “development”.  When I’m not planting trees or shrubs, installing bird houses and bird feeders, or building rock walkways, I enjoy walking in the woods observing the resident deer and turkeys, getting up close to the resident opossums (see photo), birdwatching, and awaiting the appearance of morels and spring wild flowers.  I keep looking for rattlesnakes and bobcats, hoping that there are some finding sanctuary on the property.