Sharks, Rays and Golf Cart Taxi Tours

We woke up this morning to more rain, and initially our day didn’t look very promising. At about 9am, a hotel employee came to tell us that all of our snorkeling trips had been canceled at least through tomorrow.

Bill had been suggesting for a few days that we take a Golf Cart Taxi tour of the island. I wasn’t initially very excited about that since the island is tiny and I thought we had seen everything on our bikes. Since we didn’t have much going on this morning, we decided to take the tour, and it turned out to be really interesting and useful! There were parts of the island that I didn’t know existed and our guide had a lot of interesting information about how the island is developing. We saw one part that used to be a bayou but has been filled in and now has winter homes for rich Americans. I wish I was a rich American.

Our guide took us to a beach where you can swim. The owner of the bar/hotel on the beach has created a habitat for sea horses so we got to see the sea horses. I’ve never seen any in the wild, so that was really exciting. We also learned that the bar owner regularly feeds sting rays on the beach at around 4:30 so every afternoon the rays show up for snacks. They are used to people, and they let you pet them. They are basically like the squirrels at home that people feed.

While we were on our tour, we saw boats bringing people in from snorkeling. That was interesting since our snorkel and Bill’s diving trips have all been canceled. We asked which companies were still taking people out and our guide took us over to a shop that’s willing to take us out tomorrow, rain or not. So, we are booked with Caveman Snorkel tours for tomorrow and probably Wednesday. I talked to some people who went out today and they said it was fine. This guy probably doesn’t have a lot of rules, so I think it will work out really well.

After lunch, we took our snorkel gear and went to the beach we had seen earlier. It’s not the best location I’ve been, but I saw a little brown nurse shark, a crab, and we stayed to see the rays come in. That was awesome! The picture below is a nurse shark. I didn’t have my camera with me, so I got this from Google.

After snorkeling, we ate at a restaurant on the beach. So far, the food here is nothing to be excited about. We both got a chocolate milkshake for dessert. They make milk shakes here by putting chocolate milk in a blender with some ice. It’s not good. I don’t recommend it.

Bill took his GoPro so he has most of the pictures. I had to ask for a couple to put at the top of my blog. We should have good stories tomorrow after our trip with Caveman Tours!