Crawl Caye

NOTE: These are not my photos. Since my underwater camera refused to operate, I was stuck. But the guides put together a slide show of some of their images for the week, and gave them to everyone at the end of the trip. Wasn't that nice?

The focus of this day was the South Water Caye Marine Reserve, a series of sea grass beds, patch reefs, sand bores, islets, and large cayes. The Smithsonian actually leases one of the islets as a marine research station. One of my leadership program classmates headed there the day after graduation, for dive trips on two research projects. Really!

This is a world heritage site. It's full of fish and critters, marine birds, and other marine life. Once again, we had stellar weather.

We docked at Crawl Caye and walked across the small island to the beach on the other side. Our snorkel guides awaited us there. I was supposed to go with an intermediate group, but we had some sign-up challenges. As staff, I shuffled around to help groups stay together. Plus, the evening before, one of the gentlemen from another group asked me if I'd go with him as his buddy. He was in his early 80s. He was on the cruise with his wife, celebrating their 59th anniversary. Now a farmer, he served in the Army in WWII, and was part of the occupying/rebuilding force in Germany. This would be his first-ever snorkel. How could I say no? 

 Yes, snorkelers do tend to look like creatures from another planet. Because all your time is at the surface, folks do tend to wear shirts to protect from the sun. Even so, there were some very red folks..... The guides wore the green skullcaps -- very helpful!

 Clearly the pelicans weren't bothered by the groups. In fact, some dove right in to catch their fish!

My buddy ended up getting his own private guide, he was so special. And he had a fabulous time, I'm pleased to say! Once he got settled, I went back to my group. Through some attrition and some early departures from the water, Warren ended up with just three of us and we were all pretty well matched on low-intermediate skills. So we had nearly a private tour, and were out for over an hour. It was so amazing!!

I'm so sad I have no photos, but we saw so much and had such a great time. Several types of butterflyfish. Gray and queen angelfish. Blue tangs. Lots of grunts. Yellowtail snapper. Sergeant majors. Indigo hamlets. Lots and lots of parrotfish. Wrasses and gobies. Squirrelfish. A southern sting ray. A barracuda. And so many different types of coral.

And sea cucumbers. Warren touched the end of a tiger tail and we watched it retract back under the reef. He also brought up a donkey dung, which he let me touch. Cool!

And, the best of all...... 

 Reef squid!! There were six of them. Sometimes they broke off in pairs or triplets, but they kept coming back together. We watched them for a bit, then when our group started to splinter, Karen and I went back to watch them some more. A while later, we bumped into Jonathan, our underwater photographer. He hadn't seen them yet, so we sent him over and now we have this great photo. They were ethereal and strange, beautiful and mysterious. I just did not tire of watching them.

This was a typical scene (except, no fish!). I know -- stunning!

And then we had to go back to the ship. But what an afternoon! They played a movie (Mosquito Coast with Harrison Ford, which was filmed here), but I fell asleep for a while. When I got up, I felt awful. Bless the bartenders, though (it's always good to be staff and to make friends with the rest of the crew) -- they gave me bitters and soda. Not pretty, but it worked. I don't think I had sunstroke, but I was really dehydrated from the sea water and the sun certainly didn't help. But, back to normal! And a good thing too -- I had my final hosted group dinner that evening.