Wednesday: Time to go Home

 Monday we decided to just sign up with a snorkeling/kayaking tour that left from right in front of the hotel. Travel to the beach, snacks, great guides. Seemed like the way to go.

Apparently this is a prime spot for the green sea turtles to nest and the guides knew right where the turtles liked to hang out.

Basically you just sort of float along and watch the turtles sitting on the bottom munching away on the sea grass.

Every few minutes a turtle would come to the surface to breathe and then head back down to eat. Steve was trying to sneak up on this one but no dice!

I loved the sign on the bus that was hauling the group around (there were 14 of us). The other sign stated not to get on this bus if you were wet.

Mmmm .... so we were on our way to snorkel then get on the bus to go to the beach and then back on the bus to go back to downtown.

How exactly was that going to work? No problem - we entered the bus wet and sandy but no on yelled at us! The beach was the very popular Flaminco beach on the north end of the island.

On the north end are two old Sherman tanks left over from the days the US Navy used the area for weapons testing (this ended in 1975). Now they have become a unique feature of the beach!

So we spent an hour and a half laying around the beach (in the shade - nice palm trees!) after a lunch at one of the many food vendor places on the beach.

Steve of course walked from one end of the beach to the other - just checking to make sure we didn't miss anything ;-)

Tiring day - but we still sat outside to watch the sunset from the deck. Early to bed tonight for sure!!

Tuesday was our day to check out the rest of the island so we picked up a golf cart for the day. Love these things - especially in the nice weather we've had there.

First stop was a relatively quite beach - Playa Zoni - on the east side of the island. Very few people here because you almost need to have a car or golf cart to get here. It was better than Flaminco - at least we thought so. Really gorgeous. There is a very small dot on the left side of the beach that is Steve ....

The flowers along the road by one of the homes were amazing. They stretched the whole length of the property. Sadly I don't know what kind of flowers they are.

Rented snorkel equipment and checked out a couple of other beaches to see what we could see.

The water is in the low 80's so it was pretty pleasant swimming around. Unfortunately the water was very stirred up and murky from recent weather. A shame as we found a very nice reef right off of the beach on the west side of the island. Another good day ....

Entertaining/weird things: the statue on the end of the breakwall. This is a statue of Hector el protector! He was made by a local artist in 5 days using pallets from the local junk yard and is a permanent installation protecting the island from visitors with bad intentions towards the nature of the island. Up close, he's pretty fearful looking!

Sailboat stuck in the harbor: it was there when we came and it was there when we left.

I don't know how they were ever going to get off. In the picture left you can see the wash from the engine as they tried plowing forward. Every so often the three folks on board would dingy to the main dock and then return to the boat. Definitely entertaining but we felt sorry for them.

 When we flew over the harbor on our way out, it was pretty easy to see that the sailboat (lower center) was anchored over a shoal. Hopefully they at some point made it to the deeper dark blue water!

This was the inside of our little plane. Only 5 passengers on the way back.

We were in the back seat.

The small plane we flew in. It was ok.

Back to Ft. Lauderdale, pick up a car, drive three hours to Banana Bay. Long day.

The nice thing? We knew we were home when we walked down to the boat and all of the lights were on!! Just like Motel 6!!

Our boat neighbors were watching over Yesterday's Dream while we were away and turned the lights on - knowing it would be late when we made it back.

Too nice ;-)

Good trip - good to be back home!