Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Day 158






Bob promised us a great day of exploring last night at happy hour and he didn’t fall short! We got up this morning and puttered around for a while before heading out in the dingys at 10:30. We travelled down the creek Papa and I crossed yesterday (the buoy was in 3-4’ of water then) and through the mangroves and eventually came to the bottom of the highest hill on the island and from here the river escaped to the ocean.

There is history on this hill and I won’t go to deep into the story but basically Normans Cay use to be used for drug trafficking and it was from this spot that agents set up a powerful camera and monitored the planes and watched the activities before bringing down the drug operation. As well from this spot is the most spectacular view of the beach and ocean. We took a few group pics but I’ll have to get them from Bob at some point (my batteries died =[ ).

After having some fun on the ridge we went back down to the beach and had a picnic and Marg and I got into our wet suits and did some snorkelling. It was here that I found my favourite marine creature! Tube worms! Lmfao. They look like a plant with a long vertical (well perpendicular to whatever they’re on) tube like base and it looks like an umbrella or a fan at the top. Well why I like them is they’re amusing to play with, when you sort of fan them disturbing the water near them they suddenly disappear! But moments later they reappear the same as before....ok they sound lame I know but Marg and I love them.
The Proper Way To Parallel Park!!

Bob eventually got his wet suit on and joined us and then we walked across the sandbar to the other side of the island and snorkelled back. We even got to see another lionfish who was making a nest in a hole in the rock wall. Lionfish are beautiful but they can cause you harm (sting you like a jellyfish) and they are not native species and having no natural predators are killing off native species. You are suppose to kill (spear) a lionfish if you see one, and apparently they are very good to eat if you know how to properly clean them and get out all the stingers and poison, but Shroud Cay is part of the Bahamas Exuma Wildlife refuge park and even taking a small shell off of the beach is illegal.

The tide was going out so we lingered as long as we could before getting back in the dingys and heading back to the boats. We got stuck in several places along the way and Papa had to lift the motor and I got out and pulled the dingy to deeper water.

Back on the boat I got to use to stern shower and scrub off all the salt. It’s very weird standing on the transom out in the open with a hand held showerhead shampooing your hair (bathing suit on of course!).

We collectively decided not to do a happy hour tonight as we were all tired but Bob said he had to come around with a surprise for us all. I don’t think i mentioned it but Bob has constantly been going on about Jell-O shooters. He was going to make Jell-O shooters one day! When he said about the surprise I laughed and bet that he was going to bring around the shooters. Sure enough he had bought the Jell-O and got Marg to make the shooters lol.

Last night we all had a general consensus that we’d head over to Warderick Wells tomorrow and at 9 this morning with the daily Exuma park broadcast we made the reservations for a mooring ball.




Niki

1 comment:

Sammeh said...

so the tube worms things
I thought they only grew in the deeeeeeeeppp seea.
cause they look funky there
but apparently not
and I agree the lionfish are pretty :]
I don't think I would be able to eat him though xD
I wanna scuba diving~ ♥