Near our anchorage was a drift snorkel (ride the tide) that looked like fun, with shallow coral dropping off quickly down a slope into a trench between islands. We hopped in and it wasn’t long before we started to see the turtles that call this place home.

We can both swim a very long way underwater, but Ouest is getting to the point now that she just might have me beat. I love when we’re out snorkeling together and I look over to find her jamming along on a long distance swim just for the fun of it.

That dark strip between islands is where the turtles live.

Drone sunset.

Sunrise.

There was a resort nearby where we able to both get dinner and set up a couple of dives for the next day. This is a small island with nothing on it other than this small dive resort, and at first they seemed really confused by us. We pulled up to their dock in the dinghy and a manager came rushing over.

“Can I help you?”

“We were wondering if we could have some drinks and dinner here?”

“Ummmmm… yes… but uhhhh… there will have to be a minimum of 100,000 spent. Each.”

That’s about six dollars. We agreed to his insane demand.

Later, when it came time to settle up with our waiter he asked for our room number and we explained we were on a sailboat.

“Oh, you are from the outside!”

We felt like we had spiced up their day a little bit.

We hopped aboard the rickety, slow, wooden double decker and all promptly determined it was our favorite dive boat of all time.

Our dive master gave us a rundown of where we were going, what we were likely to see, what the currents were like, and asked us not to run off and get lost.

This turtle swam right towards us as we were swimming along. He then turned right in front of us, snuggled in underneath a bit of coral, and immediately closed his eyes to sleep. He could not possibly have cared less that we were there. I remember a few years back in St. Croix when we were getting our scuba certification we saw turtles sleeping and it occurred to us that we had had no idea how, or even if, turtles slept. If we really thought about it we’d have realized that the turtles we had hit out at sea (it’s happened a few times) were actually sound asleep at the surface. Far out at sea there isn’t much choice, but in shallow waters, nothing beats wedging themselves under a bit of a coral overhang.

Break time as we motor to the next dive.

This was a very swift drift dive in search of Mantas. The dive master carried ropes with grappling hooks to dig into the bottom if we needed to stop. The current was so strong that we were dropped off and picked up 3 miles apart, but unfortunately didn’t spot any mantas on this day.

There were a heck of a lot of unicornfish, though.

And some absolute monster stingrays. This picture was from far away, but it puts into perspective just how big these rays were. That’s a blacktip reef shark next to him.

Another great day spent underwater.