Well nested on the east coast, is a place I never imagined I could long to go back and visit. Its funny how many individuals perceive east coast to be; a land where money and time-share a common language; “scarcity,” while forgetting there are better things there. To some extent, owing to its geographic position, it is not wrong for one to ague that, it is a forgotten treasure because it is rarely spoken when it comes to choosing places to tour.
During our winter holiday in 2009, my parents proposed that we should have a visit to one of the less spoken tourist centers; something that I opposed at first but on further consideration I accepted without knowing the fun that was awaiting me. It takes approximately two days to travel by road to this wonderful island if you live in New York or its outskirts.
Geographically it is near the southern Georgia coast. Occupiers of this island thrive within a magnificent ecosystem comprising of sand dunes, marshland, and a variety of tree species, which makes the place look even more beautiful.
This habitat is mainly is comprised of animals of the giant lizard family (which can scare the breath out of one), wild horses, birds, and pigs, turtles, sharks and snakes of all species. The site of nesting turtles made the scenery even more beautiful as they maneuvered around their eggs making sure no predators struck.
Although the journey to the island was exciting, the site of the scenery left me more excited. One unique thing with this island is that, its weather; you can imagine living home in a quite chilly morning, hence the need to cover yourself, only to find that you have abused the weather on reaching the Island the following day; because the temperature were more than anyone could anticipate.
Because this is an island, our adventure commenced the moment we arrived at the seashore. We had an option of using a private boat but my parents opted for a ferry, which we boarded at St. Mary’s Georgia. It was my fist time riding in a ferry; hence, you can imagine how fun it was having met local natives who spoke a language one could think they were not American citizens, but rather originated from some foreign country where English was a scarce language.
Have small crawling animals like ticks ever defeated you? Do not laugh and take it as a joke because this visit proved this to me. Like oxygen, ticks were allover, hence acting as our welcoming masters and hosts something we got used to because even if you tried to kill them it was just a waste of time. Singly I can testify I removed more than 150 ticks stuck on my body, a fact that made me question the essence of companies manufacturing insecticides because, this ticks not only seemed stubborn, but also immune.
Although the ticks had given us a general preview of how life was to be in these nine days, it was important for the rangers on duty to give us a formal welcome. On funny thing about their welcoming note was that, instead of them encouraging us, they increased the levels of our heartbeats by telling us how dangerous animals in this park were; hence the need to take precaution.
I cannot deny that I had seen raccoons previously, but Cumberland’s Raccoons were more that one could anticipate their size could be; because not only were they enormous, but also they seemed more voracious. They were so famished that no matter how much we fed them, one could think they had an extra stomach they put the food because they were insatiable.
Because we could not stand these Raccoons, we opted to stay up at the Hickory hills, something we never knew was worse that feeding them. The conditions there were un-tolerable because, the place was extra thorny and invested with so many biting insects that included our welcoming friends; ticks.
On our second to seventh day, we went around the jungle park where we saw the beauty of creation and evolution, which included wild turkeys, a variety of serpents, and other wild animals, which I think are the causes of my nightmares. As it was culture of the island, on our second last day, we attended a unique swimming competition; unique in the sense that it was not between human beings, but rather between human beings and dolphins.
In addition to swimming with dolphins, the imagination of a shark attacking me made the experience more enjoyable, although terrifying.
In conclusion, I do not want to remember my last day in the park; it makes me long for the park. This is because for once, I had the chance of touching and feeding most venomous snakes, something that was my greatest fear. In addition, I had the chance of seeing wild horses mate, hence continuation of the living species; horses being my favorite animals.