Thursday, June 26, 2014 - Snorkeling Round 2

We woke up late at 7:00 a.m.!  The sun gets up really early here, around 5:30 am (and goes to bed around 6:30 p.m.) We had breakfast with Jim and Kathy and then went to get ready for snorkeling.  We left at 8:30 a.m. and it took us about 40 minutes to get out to what is called the 5^th Cut of the Southern Barrier reef.  It was a gorgeous journey.

When we jumped in the water and were away from the boat, David turned to get a picture of the boat.  We didn't know until we got home and looked at the picture that there was this large something in the water near the front of the boat.  If you zoom in, it looks like it is as big as the boat itself, which is about 35 feet!  How could something that big be in the water and us not see it???  I emailed Gary at Hamanasi and he said the consensus was that it is a ray with its wing out of the water.  HAHAhahaha!  It is all in the perspective!  It is much closer to us than the boat... boy, do I feel stupid!

The four of us snorkeled with 4 people we didn’t know.  Eric was our guide.  One of those four people needed a life jacket and seemed to need a great deal of help from Eric, so it was slow going and we didn’t get to see very much.   However, David took some really interesting pictures of the surface of the water which I will probably end up using in some art projects.

The visibility was much better than when we went scuba diving.

It was also great to be able to snorkel with Jason since we didn't get to do that the first time...

For some reason the first time we went out snorkeling I didn't really dive down.  I spent most of this trip completely underwater.

Surprisingly, Danika really enjoyed diving down too!

David took this great shot of this sting ray just leaving its hiding place in the sand on the ocean floor.

We took a break at IZE again, and had fresh watermelon, pineapple, and peanut butter cookies. C-Dog, our diving instructor, was there, so David snapped this picture of him on the dive boat because we didn't get one of him when we were scuba diving.

After a break at IZE we went out to 3^rd Cut and were with Eric again.  Danika had fun messing around on the boat ride over.

During the break, Chris Didway asked Garrif, the boat captain, if our two families could be together so that we could take pictures for them.  YES!  It was so much better.  I did a lot more diving under water and went deep and I could see so much more.  It was much easier than I remember.  We saw rays and sea cucumbers and many different kinds of fish. 

 Our friends, the Didways, just as we dropped into the water...

 David did some diving down as well.

I took some time taking pictures of the Didway family underwater.  It was really fun.  This is Grant and Grace...

This is Grant with Chris, Grace, and Larry in the background.

Larry diving deep...

Then Grace...

And Danika too...

Chris told me to make sure that I didn't use all of my time taking pictures of them, so that I could enjoy the snorkeling. I was actually having fun taking pictures of them.  When I thought I had a few good ones, I went back to snorkeling. 

At one point I dove down to take a picture of a stingray at the bottom and I hear Eric, our snorkeling guide, yelling “RAY...RAY” from on top of the water.  I looked up and this enormous spotted eagle ray was coming right towards us.  He swam right past me and he had two fish swimming in the shelter of its wings.  One of the fish was about 2 ½ feet long!  I was in shock at the size of the eagle ray, but somehow managed to swing the camera his way and snap a few photos!  It was amazing.  When Eric got to the surface after showing everyone, he said “Holy shit, that was the biggest spotted eagle ray I have ever seen!”  We figured the ray had a wingspan somewhere between 10 and 12 feet, and a tail length of about 20 feet.

Jason had chosen to stay in the boat for that snorkel outing, so he missed it.  I was really sad about that, but so happy that the rest of us were able to see such an amazing specimen.  When it passed, I handed the camera to David and he swam after it, but there was no way he could keep up.  The funny thing is it looked like it was drifting slowly due to its size, but it was actually hauling past us! 

We were on a high the entire way back to Hamanasi!  It was time for lunch and we decided to do things differently and have lunch down off of the veranda on a little patio of four tables.

After lunch everyone went swimming in the pool… what a great day.  

While we are sat here, the Hamanasi staff are in the middle of moving a huge palm tree.  They dug it up and it fell with a crash because they lost control of it… I think it was much heavier than they expected.  Luckily it didn’t damage any property.  It took over 40 men to lift it up and move it. 

After swimming in the pool a bit, David felt a little ill from the morning snorkeling so we split a 7-Up and sat by the pool.  Then David and I biked into Hopkins to a wood sculptor called David’s to look at wood carvings.  We also looked at another wood sculptor called Alex’s.  Alex had the nicer stuff and even had a really nice sting ray, but we wanted a spotted eagle ray because of the one we saw today. 

David’s place had a partially finished spotted eagle ray made out of ziricote wood, so he said he would take 10 minutes and finish it by putting eyes on it and making it look really nice.  So while he finished it, we went back to Alex’s to look at the sting ray.  When we went back to David’s, he put it on the stand and it looked like it was diving down.  We really liked it so we bought that one.  We paid the full price of $60 dollars which I thought was too much, but David wanted to do the negotiating and I guess he just really wanted it.  While we were there we met a couple, Caroline and Justin, and let us use her phone to take pictures of David the sculptor working on our eagle ray.  They emailed us the pictures below... so nice!

This is David working on some of the carving...

Here he is putting on the finishing touches and buffing it out...

We biked back to Hamanasi in time for happy hour, so we bought the kids virgin pina coladas and we had the special, El Matadors, where had tequila, rum, triple sec, lime and cranberry juice.  We took them out to the pool and relaxed before dinner.

There is this great guy, Edgar, that works at Hamanasi.  He started in Maintenance, then moved to the pool and serving drinks there.  He is moving to serving in the restaurant.  He is really personable and had a good laugh with David as he was taking these towels in from the pool.

After an amazing day snorkeling, we were all in high spirits for dinner.

The appetizer at dinner was amazing; coconut, carrot, and ginger soup.  The main course was a very delicious shrimp, mushroom, and bacon over penne pasta.  We had doughnut a la mode with bananas and caramel sauce for dessert – awesome! 

After dinner we got some coffee and went out to the pool to watch Danika swim.  Jason went back to the room as he wasn’t feeling that well.  The view from the pool out to sea is always beautiful, but so is the view back towards the restaurant.  David took this photo and it really gives you the feel of the place.

We went to the gift shop to get David a Dive Belize t-shirt with a spotted eagle ray on the back – so cool!  Then we went back to the pool to watch Danika and ended up laying back and watching the stars.  There was a perfect Big Dipper and it looked so much closer than it does in Montana.  It made me smile because Big Dipper is the name of the boat we took out snorkeling today.  

Then it started to rain slow big drops so we decided to head in and call it a night.  Danika wanted to snuggle on our big king sized bed.  David was taking a shower and Jason reading, so we started singing all of the songs from Sound of Music.  It was so much fun.  What a great day, We couldn't have asked for a better one!  I finally feel like I am truly relaxing.