Tuesday 3/21/17 = another fun day with Brendal’s Dive Center. This excursion was to dive or snorkel, see and feed sea turtles and stingrays, and have lunch on the beach. It was a really fun day! First we went into a cove where there were turtles. This is the best shot that I got. They were fast little buggers! We had two boats, and the other boat got there first, so they had all the excitement. The water in the cove was open to the ocean which was really rough, so there were lots of swells and waves. We didn’t stay long.
Next stop was snorkeling. Nobody got to do any diving today since the wind caused too much wave action for the dive site. Since not everybody on the boat would be diving, it wasn’t a good day for boat bobbing for the non-divers. So we snorkeled and saw lots of little fishes and coral. We were only in about 4′ of water. It was hard to not kick the coral! This is a puffer fish. He was about 12″ which is pretty big for such shallow water.
A little parade of three…
R.J. was one of the guys with Brendal’s crew. He found some hidey-holes and stabbed some lobster for our lunch. He would stab one, and just move it down the pole, and stab another and another until he had a whole shishkabob full! We took notes for future reference. 🙂 He cleaned them right there on the boat, which we also watched for future reference. More local knowledge.
This is the beautiful beach on Manjack Cay where we had lunch. This is the next cay north of Green Turtle Cay, so not very far from the marina where we’re staying.
R.J. cooking lunch for us.
There was conch salad, green salad, lobster, fish, fresh made bread… it was all really good! And of course, a seemingly endless supply of rum punch, fruit punch, and water.
The lunch camp set-up.
What a beautiful setting for a picnic on the beach!
There were rays at the beach where we had lunch. They were very accustomed to people. They just swam around us all afternoon. We had little pieces of fish to feed them, which was a lot of fun.
This is how shallow they would come – you could hold the fish in your hands and they’d sweep by and take it. Their mouth just felt boney and rough. Their skin felt like wet leather; really soft and smooth.
I had a piece of fish between my toes, and my toes curled down into the sand. The rays would swim across and vacuum it up.
This just made me laugh. People were playing Frisbee and football and standing around in the water talking. The rays just swam around like no big deal – like puppies wanting to be in the middle of the action. (I hope the video works – this is the first time I’ve tried putting one in the blog.)
This is Brendal, and Mary Anne who was working on his crew. Mary Anne was so much fun on both of our trips with Brendal’s, making sure we were having fun! She is a great ambassador for both Brendal’s and Green Turtle Cay, drawing people into the fun. We ran into her at a couple of different places on the island, and she was always encouraging us to dance, laugh, and participate in whatever was going on.
Once again, we had a really fun day. Seems to be what happens here in the Bahamas! 🙂