This morning I discovered that the rooster, who yesterday was so intent on disturbing our sleep, cannot be trusted as a reliable alarm clock. It was nowhere to be found at 5:30 in the morning, but fortunately my cabin mate Dylan woke me up at around 6:45. After a breakfast of banana-nut bread and cereal, we headed down to the “Baths”, huge batholiths notorious for their unique geographical features caused by natural erosion over time. Contrary to popular belief, we did not bathe in them; however we did take a scenic walk (and at times crawl) through them to the beginning of our snorkeling site. During this adventure, Sarah explained the reason for the odd crevices and holes in the cave walls, which she said were caused by the intermittent heating and cooling of lava. After a short briefing, we all jumped in the water for an informative and exhilarating introduction to fish identification, during which we saw yellow snapper, a barracuda, blue tang, parrotfish, and sand divers to name a few. When we circled around the Baths and back to the beach at Guava Berry, where we are staying, we had a lunch of ham, turkey, and cheese sandwiches. We then went down to the beach for a little fun with the frisbee. I kept telling everyone that was hating on my overhand throwing form that my motions were pure and unmatched, but I don’t think anyone was buying it, especially when it landed in the water after curving wildly away from my target. After countless attempts to grab and throw the frisbee while diving into the water, I finally gave up and went further up beach for a more in depth discussion about fish identification with Caitlin, the Caribbean fish expert. From there we went back to the dock and left for our fish identification dive. The dive today was my favorite we have done so far, but probably won’t be by tomorrow. Alice’s backside was teeming with numerous and diverse species of fish in every shape and size imaginable (Alice’s Backside is the name of the dive site by the way. It was named by rummed up pirates dreaming about voluptuous females while sailing by. So now they do two things well: deftly name rocky islands and contract scurvy). While down we saw squirrel fish (whose eye size is uncanny), really small neon shrimp that kinda looked like Ewa from Avatar, multiple types or parrot fish, hamlets, and snappers, coral, and sea anemones among others. On our way back on the boat, I went up to the top deck and got my turn at driving the boat for a little while which was pretty fun. When we got back to our casas, we took showers and headed down to dinner at Mad Dogs. On the way, Dylan clumsily dropped his sunglasses in the cattle guard while trying to transfer them from his hat to his face. After which, Chandler and I had to fish out.
Overall today was great! But of course it was, we are on a tropical island in the middle of the Caribbean getting the opportunity to scuba dive!
Elkhorn Coral
