Just came back to peel off our gear and shower after the coolest experience ever! I was shivering by the time we came out of the water and started the 5-10 minute walk back up the beach to our room, some from cold but some from the excitement of it all, I think!
Met over at the condo of owner of the resort, Chuck, around 6:30pm, as the sun was setting. His pad is right next door to our room, so it was about a 30 second walk over. We sat and chatted with him, and loved on his sweet pooch, Misha. He told us some crazy stories about a couple of times when an octopus jumped on/wrapped around snorkel guest's legs. Said one lady it happened to was yelling, "Get it off! Get it off!" heehee...I would think it was cool but might start yelling that, too, I think! He gave us tips on how to maneuver dealing with that sort of thing. He helped us gear up- wetsuits and I had an extra coral guard. The boys had life jackets over their wetsuits. Chuck had us smear baby shampoo into the masks, that we rinsed out when we got down to the snorkel site- it makes it so that our masks didn't fog up one bit- so cool! Then, we grabbed our waterproof flashlights, masks, snorkel gloves, and fins, and started the short walk down the beach in the darkness, with crabs darting to and fro all along the walk. Mark and Cam came with us to help the boys gear up, and to snap a few pics. (Cam wanted to pass on this adventure, which was probably good!)
You have to kind of walk in to the water backwards once you've put on your fins. We rinsed the masks and got them on, and Chuck did a check to make sure everyone's mask was tight enough. Then we put on the fins, then the gloves, and got the flashlight around our wrists. Where we go in is at the pilings of an old pier that got ripped off back when Hurricane Hugo hit them, and the concrete is covered with sharp barnacles. There are also some lion fish and stinging coral that apparently like to hang out near them, so Chuck took us slightly to the left of them. It is shallow when you first plop/dive into the water, and you need to keep your body up at the surface, horizontally, with your feet straight behind you and not down; otherwise, you might hit a sea urchin, and there are plenty of them there in the grassy shallow area near the shore! (This was the most worrisome part in my mind for me, as I remembered this from our first snorkel with Louis, at the same location.)
Chuck went first and then called out to Logan to join him, and he was awesome- he held onto Logan's arm/hand for the entire snorkel, as he did for their first night snorkel. Elijah followed and then I brought up the rear.
I wish I could describe how amazing this experience was. Picture pitch blackness around you, other than the moonlight and stars, and other than the twinkling lights from resorts far in the distance. The only thing you hear is the "underwater sounds" that come with having your ears under or half-under, the ocean. It's pitch black all around you, other than the streams of light coming from the flashlights that everyone is shining on the coral floor right below you. Little fish of all different shapes come darting at you and poke you curiously, as they are drawn to your flashlight. The current pushes you in a direction you might not want to go- towards higher coral, or into a fellow swimmer's kicking fins, so you have to try to slow and back up your swimming, to keep a safer distance. If you poke your head up to peek around at the surface, you realize that you are alone in the ocean in the dark with your 10 year old and 11 year old, trusting a man you just met last week to keep you all safe. Woah! (I was both praising and praying as we went along.) Can you picture it?
My senses were on high alert- yet it is so peaceful and eerily beautiful that I was in awe.
Things I saw:
-beautiful coral
-sea anemone- the pink, flowy kind that wave around and then "swoop!" disappear into a crevice when they are touched
-fish-can't remember most of the names, other than the barracuda
-touched the funky "trunk fish"- what an odd looking, awesome creature he was!
-held a Queen Conch- I know they're supposed to be yummy, but I found her just beautiful
-lobsters- a few of them along the way! They were SO cute; maybe my favorite; they'd be peeking and half hanging out of the coral, watching us curiously.
-sea cucumber
-2 different spotted moray eels. Yeah. As in, National Geographic material- face peeking out, slithering/sliding through the coral, poking it's head out and then hiding back in as we'd get close...hello, adrenaline!
-my favorite, and the thing I was hoping to see: a type of pufferfish, called a porcupine fish. There were a ton of them- they swim around you and if you touch one, POOF! It blows up to tennis ball size, with it's tiny eyes looking at you and it's tiny fins fluttering at it's sides. When you hold one, they are as light as air- they are almost cartoonish in how cute they are. Then when you let them go, they just sort of float off, fluttering their wing-like fins, and then they eventually go back down to normal size.
I think I would become addicted to this if I lived here! What an amazing and humbling experience. As Chuck said, "Not many people get to experience this in their lifetime, never mind kids!" He had told Mark before that usually they do not take kids out this young, but that our boys were so respectful and yet brave on their day snorkel with Louis, that he enjoyed not only doing this once with them, but twice. I would have never even dreamed of getting to experience something like this, never mind my children getting to! So thankful.
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