Day 5: Shopping in Georgetown and more snorkeling!

We had planned to go to the Turtle Farm today, but when we got there we discovered they are closed on Saturdays and Sundays. Bummer! So we decided to go to Georgetown, the main city, instead to do some souvenir shopping. Georgetown is where the cruise ships come into port, but fortunately there were none there at the time, so shopping was fairly slow and pleasant. We did get a lot of souvenirs and it was fun.

All throughout Georgetown there are painted statues of iguanas, kind of like the Elk in Elkhart County, I guess. We took photos with a few of them.

For lunch we found a local fast food restaurant called Mac Donalds, no, seriously, not McDonalds as in the golden arches, but Mac Donalds, with mostly fish on the menu! They did have the classic standby cheeseburger for Alex and Ben ordered Nachos Supreme, which were loaded with cheese, jalopenos, black olives and scallions. Daryl tried the conch fritters (the rubber band texture is what I can't handle!), and I had a grilled fish sandwich, which was decent, not great.

Then we came back to the condo and did some more snorkeling. We saw another (smaller, but cooler looking) eel, as well as other awesome fish just outside our place! I'm excited I figured out how to "snapshot" off of Daryl's underwater video camera, so now I can post photos of the underwater stuff, too! So here are some just from yesterday's snorkeling off our beach. I may add some later from other days, too, now that I figured it out! Daryl had bought some squid to take out as fish food, so we had a few more fish up close, but really what you see is not unusual, even without bait!

damsel, I think

Blue tangs, I think.

the eel trying to hide behind a rock!

me feeding the fish!

Butterfly

In the evening, we brought our supper (frozen pizza from the grocery store!) down to the beach for an awesome dining experience ... at least the view was unbeatable! We finally had a somewhat better  sunset on thethird evening we tried!

Fourth Day: Blowholes, Rum Point, Starfish and more!

We decided to take a driving tour of the island on the fourth day. Our condo is located on "Seven Mile Beach", on the west side of the island, facing southwest. The "rough", rocky side of the island is the south or south east shore, where there is a lot of volcanic rock. One location not only has rough waves breaking against the rocks, but actual blow holes where the water shoots up through the cavern! It was pretty cool.

The boys kept trying to throw rocks into the hole to see what would happen, it was a fun game! Of course the water then also creates lots of little tide pools in the rocks, where we saw little fish, crabs, snails, etc.

Along our way, we stopped at a place called "The Pirate's Caves" and took a short guided tour including various animals (iguanas, birds, goats, crabs), as well as a cave with lots of bats flying around! We are certainly having a lot of up close and personal experiences with unique animals this trip!

 

 

Iguanas like this run around free all over this island!

Whatever this tree is, it is blooming everywhere on this island, so brilliant!

Then we went to "Rum Point" on the east end of the island, where there is a tourist club, shops, restaurants, a pier, and very shallow water with good snorkeling. We had a great lunch there, Daryl had the catch of the day which was Mahi Mahi, and I had the blackened fish sandwich, which was some kind of grouper and was delicious ... see, I can enjoy fish! Even Ben liked the blackened fish! I gave him a bite and he asked for more!

I thought this was a cute sign!

We did some snorkeling there and were able to see a stingray, a 5 ft long eel, squid, and of course lots of tropical fish. Then we moved on to another beach near there called Kaibo beach, famous for starfish. Sure enough we found 3 starfish easily just by walking in the shallow water.

The boys also had a blast playing on the rope swing hung from a tree there!

 

Back "home" at our condo, we tried again to watch the sunset, but again the sun slipped behind clouds just before it hit the horizon, too bad. It is still gorgeous to be out there on the beach at dusk!

 

 

Then we realized it was a full moon, which was really beautiful, too. Photos did not capture it well enough!

Ben wanted to take some trick photos with the moon, and some of them turned out pretty cool!

 

 

 I hope some of you are able to see this blog now. Sorry it was such a pain to gain access!

 

Dolphin Cove!

I forgot to mention, to top off the day yesterday, we had a great supper, too! One of the restaurant guide books we had picked up recommended places the locals eat, so we found this small shack called "Seymour's Jerk Centre", supposedly some of the best jerk chicken and jerk pork in town! It was really delicious. They had a few outdoor picnic tables, so we tried to sit there and eat, but unfortunately, Alex was being eaten up by mosquitos, so we wound up just taking it home and eating in.

So, this morning, we walked along our beach for a while, just messing in the rocks and water. Just less than a mile up the beach is a famous beach called cemetery beach (it's adjacent to a cemetery), where there is good snorkeling and diving, so we came back with all the snorkel gear and hung out for a while in the water and in the shade of the cool trees. Ben and Daryl saw squid, and barracuda, and we all saw lots of sergeant majors and more.

brain coral is washed up everywhere

the cemetery

sea grape trees

Ben floating!

Ben had a great time snorkeling today!

In the afternoon we had booked reservations for the "Ultimate Swim Program" at Dolphin Cove, swimming with the dolphins! Everything revolves around the  cruise ships here, so whenever the cruise ship crowds are not around, business is slow. Our condo owner offered us a 2 for 1 deal if we went in the afternoon. Sure enough when we got there, a huge crowd of cruise passengers were just finishing up in the gift shop and leaving ... we were so glad we were not there at the  same time. We got so much more personal attention during our tour!

First, a guy took us to a low open tank in which he had starfish, jellyfish, lobster, conch, anemones, jellyfish, urchins, and more. He gave us a very informative lecture, lesson about each of the creatures, and then he let us hold them! He even let Daryl hold the lobster when he asked, which he does not usually let people do!

Next, a tour guide took us to the open air bird aviary. There were parrots, macaw, peach-faced lovebirds, and cockatoo. We got to interact with and hold several of them, very cool!

Ben feeding a lovebird!

Alex feeding lovebirds from his hands!

a cockatoo

 

 Then we were given lifejackets and instructions on how to interact with the dolphins! It was a small group, just us and 3 other couples! It takes place in a salt water lagoon, and we each in turn got to touch, be kissed and kiss the dolphins, then we got to take 2 different "rides", one being pushed by the feet by 2 dolphins (like superman!), and the other being pulled by holding on to the dorsal fins of 2 dolphins! Sadly, they did not allow our own photography :-( They have a professional photographer and try to sell you expensive photos at the end. Well, we still have the awesome memories and after the experience I took these few shots of the dolphins just roaming around the lagoon!

Our 2 dolphins were Lucy and Sally!

This was the lagoon we swam in with the dolphins!

It was most definitely the experience of a lifetime!! Really amazing to be so up close and personal with those beautiful animals!
Then, on our way back, we stopped in the town called Hell. It is famous for buying a postcard saying "I've been to Hell and back", and sending it to someone with the postmark of "Hell", so we sent one to ourselves as a souvenir!

I'm glad they had this message painted on 2 sides of the building! Much better!

 

Overall another wonderful day!