This post is a day late but hopefully not a dollar short.  We were without electricity for a good portion of the morning and afternoon yesterday.  The internet link went down but never came back on even though the electric found its way to our home.  Ying/Yang of being in a beautiful, remote location.

 

Yesterday, the major activity was a walk on terra firma to the dive shop for a snorkeling excursion terra mare.

The dive shop was your typical, thatched roof sandy hut with a few license plates posted for good measure.

 

 

The kind helpful folks on duty provided the goggles and fins and demonstrated that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

 

 

Then after the ever so important “roll-call” (done at the end of each dive to ensure no one left behind), we were off to the boat..

The two-hour excursion took us to three different dive sites.  One, the Blue Room accessible only by diving under the cliff edge and into a domed cave carved out of the bluff.

 

 

The next stop was a shipwreck with its propeller still in place, quickly being homesteaded by brain coral.

 

The last stop was in a shallow bay, home to several fishing boats.  After their morning catch, the fisherman clean their bounty in the bay and toss the resulting chum overboard gladly eaten by a group (family?) of sea turtles.  By nature, the turtles are vegetarian and do not act as predators but when a meal is prepared and served up like delivery from GrubHub, they happily partake.  Two of them seemed to befriend me and we floated together synching in rhythm, up and down, surfacing for a turtle gulp of air.  We swam together for about 15 minutes, just turtles and me.  At one point their backs were close enough to touch, so close I could see detail of their exquisite shell markings.  My emotions swirled as we swam, effortless and buoyant, so grateful they agreed to share their habitat with humans.  I think it must be the same feeling one has seeing the lion or elephant on the Serengeti – but in the Mare, the sea turtle.

 

To top all of this, we had a friend fly in proving that a bird in the kitchen may have a better snack than the bird in the hand.