Well, the winds were down, so we wanted to do the drift snorkel again. Basically the drift area is a wide area between the shore and the outer reef – you can see where the breakers hit with the white foam. There are 2 strips of reef, one close to the shore, and one near the main reef. It was so windy on Wednesday we stayed nearer the shore. This time we swam further out, and this area is so full of varied and healthy soft corals. Im not sure what they are all called, but they are shaped like fingers of different colors and textures, and fans – greeny yellow and lovely purple. Some heads of coral too, on which these other things grow. It is not like Aruba where we see a lot of parrot fish and hear them crunching on the hard corals. We saw many of our beloved friends AND a hawksbill turtle, which is much rarer than the green turtles, and the same green turtle with a chunk missing that wed seen before, and 2 little Southern Atlantic sting rays (the typical dark gray ones) and a HUGE ONE right at the very end, in the
sand. He was stirring up so much sand we could hardly see him unless we stood up (the depth was only about 3 deep there). We included a short video of him. He was over 3 in diameter – David swears he was 4 – as big as the ones at Stingray City for sure. Can anyone ever see a stingray in the wild and not think of poor Steve Irwin. We kept our distance.
Also, because of low current, we decided to not turn to the left and hug the shore as we did the other day, but to continue to swim forward to a coral garden. There were no boats there Wednesday, but today there were 2 small pleasure boats and a flotilla of skeedoos – or else we possibly couldnt not have found it.
The highlight then was that one of boat captains entertained us with enticing a large (6?) green moray eel out from under rocks with some fish skin he waved around. David also managed to get a movie for that as well.
out to find a West Indian Whistling duck that eBird had reported in a housing estate about 20 mins from here. Its a nocturnal and endangered, secretive, duck that nests in trees. How could we expect to find this? Especially as the eBird coordinates are famously off. So we drove into the estate, and parked, and looked into the channel in from the lagoon. Nope. Then Jean looked over to the vacant lot opposite, and there was a whistling duck of some sort – they stand quite upright. And then 2 more landed. We knew that there were 3 sighted and these were indeed the ones. Is that the Fell effect, John? Wow. What a treat.
Then we had to do some shopping, as we are running out of food. We decided to buy more grouper at the supermarket, and a bit of salad from their bar. David conducted a fascinating conversation with the coffee bar man – yet another Indonesian with whom he could greet and say goodbye in Bahasa Malay. They seem to be everywhere! Remember Ron and Mary Jo at the sushi restaurant in Green?
