The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

This is a chameleon.

He can swivel his eyes to look at you without even moving his head.

He particularly likes to stare down grubs, because he thinks they are yummy.

He shoots out his long sticky tongue to catch the grubs and pulls them back into his mouth before they even know what happened.

The tip accelerates at more than 50g and reaches a top speed of over 20 km/h.

Which is really fast for a tongue.

He takes his time eating the grub once it is in his mouth though.

This is a burrowing skink. He has no legs.

And he feels just like a crayon.

Which makes him slippery enough to slide into the sand really quickly.

And escape people who want to pet him because he feels like a crayon.

He eats the bugs that live in the rotting plants in the sand. So he thinks this looks like a restaurant. Which is gross.

The shovel snouted lizard dances on the sand, lifting alternate arms and legs to get them off of the hot sand.

They move really quick and are hard to get a good picture of.

Unless you catch one.

Which our guide accomplished by grabbing huge handfuls of sand after it dives into the dune. They aren’t as quick when they are under the sand.

He has little hairs on his toes that help him swim through the sand.

When you let him go he runs away.

And then dives into the sand and disappears in seconds.

So you can’t even tell where he was.

If he can’t escape into the sand he will bite you and not let go.

Even if he’s just dangling from his little jaw. This is probably more effective on birds than it is on people.

Today we dune buggied through the dunes.

It felt a lot like downhill skiing, weaving back and forth through the endless whitish dunes. But a lot less effort. Especially on the uphill parts.

On the downwind side of the dunes the sand is all at the critical angle, so any disturbance causes it to avalanche over down the side.

 

When you go over it in a dune buggy you just sink slowly down with the sand.

It was a lot of fun.