What an amazing day!
After a casual breakfast, we ate lunch – literally. Then it off to “Charter Boat Row” to board our boat “Easy Day” for the afternoon. Captain Tom from Easy Days Charter was our host, and we were able to acquire his services for a private charter – given that there were six of us. What a fantastic idea that was.
We started off our afternoon looking at dolphins. Real, out in the ocean-style, dolphins. We saw about 2-3 pods (the name for a group of dolphins), enjoying some feeding, and play time. It was unbelievable, and some of them came very close to the boat, which made for some awesome pictures (NB. I'll post a link to pix soon). Captain Tom had access to a hydrophone, which can listen to the sounds of the ocean, and we heard some pretty cool sounds coming from the dolphins.
After doing that for about 20 mins or so, we moved on to a spot to do some snorkeling. We had awesome visibility, and the waters were super calm. The sun was shining and everything was great. We followed a large sea turtle – hmmm… huge might be a better word – around until he moved on, and then proceeded to look at the coral and fish in the area. Chris and I saw a spotted ray – very large, just gliding by. We also saw a smaller ray, as well as a smaller turtle – I guess by it's size a baby one, though Captain Tom suggested it might have been a different breed of turtle. Chris and I also saw this amazing yellow fish. It was quite tiny, and looked a lot like an angel fish, however it had a super long tail, and very long fins on both the top, and underside. It seemed quite content to be watched for the longest time. I was particularly happy as I snorkeled without gulping gallons of sea water (something from my past).
We then moved on to a sandy bar where we just wandered around in waist-chest deep water. It was very relaxing and very pleasant. I think most of us think this has been the highlight of this trip, and I think a lot of it had to do with it being a private event, where we decided what we wanted to do, rather than work into an organized tour. It was over before we knew it, but a lot of fun was had.