Friday, April 29th

Ok – we now have a new #1 day of our vacation. My husband spotted the elusive “snorkeling sea turtle”. YIPPEE!!

We awoke early. Headed to the Blue Moon Café at 7:30 for an early breakfast – only to find that it didn’t open til 8. Guess that they are on “island-time” and we still haven’t chilled into “vacation-time”. So, back “home” for a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee on our patio. (We were really roughin’ it!)

On our second attempt for breakfast, we heard a rustling by the steps going up to the restaurant. Our first thought was that it was just another lizard or iguana. But, lo and behold – it was blue crab. What a creepy, Star Wars-looking creature he was!

Once the café was open, the breakfast was very good and great pineapple juice and orange juice.

We had a fabulous spot to enjoy our beach day. Comfortable chaises, under a beautiful palm tree on a gorgeous beach. Started snorkeling around 9:30. We weren’t even in the water more than 10 –15 minutes & Jim spotted a turtle. He got my attention & I couldn’t believe it. He was so cute!! (The turtle – not Jim. Just kiddin’, honey!) We had just a little underwater camera & were hoping that we caught him. He was medium-sized and oh, so beautiful. We even pointed him out to a fellow snorkeler who was in for her last swim before heading home & we made her trip! She was so happy.

We still can’t believe that we went on our other snorkeling trips & ended up finding our turtle in “our own front yard”! Awesome!! My husband quickly became my hero!! And a shout out to “jmq” - “You were right” – He was straight off the shore right in the middle! Needless-to-say, my trip was now complete!!

We couldn’t believe how great the snorkeling once there. We saw more fish and truly better variety here than we had seen so far on our vacation. We regretted not having a book or chart, at the time, to identify them right away. We saw small yellow ones that kept touching mouths. Saw schools of blue ones. Saw a beautiful tiny dark blue one with lots of iridescent light blue dots on it. Saw lots of grouper and a light translucent blue medium-large sized fish. Saw little pink/coral colored ones. Saw some medium-large silver ones with a yellow and black stripe. Saw a skinny type fish with blue in the front and a black stripe with a yellow tail. Saw schools of a couple of long fish that swam near the surface. The more mature ones had a long needle-like pointed thing on the end of its nose. Amazingly awesome time! (We now have a chart and think we probably saw black grouper, parrotfish, blue tang, trunkfish, foureye butterflyfish, yellowtail snapper, blue chromis, French grunt, squirrelfish, sergeant majors, ballyhoo and, our favorite, the bluehead wrasse.)

After snorkeling and playing in the water for a while, I headed to the gift shop. What a great little gift shop right there at the hotel. Got t-shirts for the grandkids, jewelry for the daughters, another bracelet and earrings for me, a great polo shirt for Jim and a great necklace for my Mom for Mother’s Day. Yippee – no need to hit the big city! Jim finally came looking for me. He thought that I must have gotten lost or that maybe my leg was acting up from the other day.

We were heading back to our room, to put away the new goods – and that was when the rain hit. Luckily, we were near the lobby and ran in there for cover. We must have been trapped there for about 40 minutes. But, the gods were shining on us – cause we were lucky enough to run into our new-found friends, Ginger & Steve right before they were leaving to go home. It was so great to be able to say good-bye and give heartfelt hugs to our new buddies!

Once the rain stopped, we showered off, dried off, had lunch – then hit the beach again. Snorkeling was not as good in the afternoon. It seemed cloudier – probably due to the rain. So we swam for a while, sat on the raft for a while, lounged on our chaises and checked out the hammocks. What a life – what a day!

Cleaned up later and headed to Marina Market for last minute duty free booze to bring home. Then based on a recommendation, we went to Roberts at the Elysian Resort for supper around 7. Really a nice place on Cowpet Beach. Very good food. Fantastic dessert – they called it a Hot Fudge Éclair – but, it was really an Ice Cream Puff with Hot Fudge on top. Truly delicious!!

Back “home” to a drink on “our” balcony – listening to the live Steel Pan Band music coming from the bar. Another perfect day in paradise – rain and all. Long live the turtle!!