Day Six: Into the Blue

Our final day on the island, after enduring day after day of near freezing temperatures... where the mercury regularly hit the 65º mark!... what do you think we woke up to? More of the same? A hurricane? A stray iceberg recently calved off the Greenland icecap due to global warming? No... we woke up to a Caribbean blue sky, a bright sun, gently waving palm trees... I swear we could even hear the faint cadence of calypso music in the background... it was THAT perfect! Of course... on the very day we didn't have a spare SECOND to enjoy the beach the weather comes through for us.

After our obligatory feeding of the beggar fish at breakfast, we hurried back to our room to pack and check out of the hotel before our shuttle came to pick us to to go snorkeling. Yes... after all the weather-related delays, we were finally going to get to go snorkeling. And just barely. Our shuttle to the airport was scheduled to leave only 15 mintues after the snorkel tour was supposed to be back, so the whole thing was a gamble. One we were willing to take, though. If we had been that close to some of the most amazing coral reefs and not seen them we would have been REALLY disappointed.

We finally got checked out and were waiting for the shuttle, which was really late. When it finally came, we found out that we were only the second stop on the shuttle's hotel route to pick up the other snorkelers. So we spent the next 30 minutes shuttling around to the other area hotels picking people up. When we finally headed to the dock, we saw that our hotel was only two or three blocks from our hotel! Had they told us that beforehand, we could have just walked the three minutes to get there!

When we finally got on board and fitted with our masks and fins, we headed out to the reef. En route I, of course, had to go the the bathroom and was confronted with the options of "Snapper" or "Angelfish." What kind of gender selection is THAT? Now if the boy's was labeled "Tiger Shark" or "Stingray" or even "Grouper" I could see the connection, but SNAPPER? Geesh.

Finally the moment we had been waiting for arrived and we were cleared to enter the water. I jumped in first and waited for Margaret. Now two things about Margaret: 1) A deathly fear of open water that is only calmed by phamaceuticals or... well, that's the only way to calm it, and 2) A deathly fear of sharks that is only calmed by, you guessed it... pharmaceuticals. When she got in the water, she grabbed my arm and wouldn't let go of me. I kept assuring her that everything was okay and that there was nothing to worry about. We kept close together and she was still pretty nervous, but we both got out our baggies of dog food to chum the fish over to us and finally dipped our heads underwater and HOLY CRAP! SO MANY FISH! SO MANY COLORS! SO BEAUTIFUL! After the first look, Margaret took off away from me, all anxiety melted away in the hypnotic pull of those amazing tropical fish. It was so amazing... especially since the fish had been trained for years to associate snorkelers with food and we were completely swarmed. They would bump up against you, bump into your mask, and have to be brushed out of the way when you would swim. I couldn't believe the variety of fish that were all around us. I thought I even saw a Great White Whale until I realized that it was just some pale American kid.

Now during the course of getting the hang of this whole snorkeling thing, I'd probably swallowed about a quart of saltwater. And you know how you can make yourself throw up by drinking a glass of saltwater? Well I finally couldn't take it anymore. I got so nauseous that I thought I was going to vomit into my snorkel tube and had to get out of water. There was still about 10 minutes or so left in the tour, and to my complete amazement, Margaret was still out in the water. In fact she was one of the last people to finally get back on the boat. So much for all her fears of the open water and sharks.

Then, to add to her string of overcoming fears, Margaret climbed to the top of the rock-climbing wall onboard the boat on the way back to shore! She was on a roll! I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd walked over hot coals or signed up to carry a "I'm proud to be a Democrat" sign in Temple Square. I have no idea of the anxiety-supressing qualities of drinking copious amounts of saltwater directly from the ocean.

After getting back to shore, we had just enough time to grab some lunch before we had to catch the shuttle to the cruise dock. I had read about "conch salad" in our guide book and despite the fact that it was raw conch and tomatoes with a lime juice dressing, I was adamant about trying it. I mean, what better thing for someone so nauseous from injesting a load of saltwater than some completely foreign and unusual food? Actually it turned out to be really good... and the only source of fresh vegetables that I'd consumed the entire time we were on the island!

After lunch, we loaded up and said goodbye to the island. We splurged and bought a cabin on board and even though we were only on board for 5 hours, it was $40 well spent. In fact, now over a week later, I still think back how great it was to be rocked to sleep by the ship swaying on the waves. We didn't spend all our time in the cabin, though. Margaret competed in the hula hoop contest on board, although couldn't make it past 3.7 seconds. Some drunk lady and a little girl ended up being the finalists, which says alot about what it takes to be a good hula hooper. At dinner, we sat with a retired couple from North Carolina who couldn't believe that we were from the west coast and were vacationing in the Bahamas when Hawaii was so much closer. When we told them that the airfare to Hawaii was 2.5 times our flight to Ft. Lauderdale they couldn't believe it. They were even more shocked to find out that our flight was less than $200, as their flight from North Carolina was over $800! I told them that at that price, they could have rented a car and driven to Oregon to fly to Ft. Lauderdale! I totally don't get airline prices.

Anyway, as the sun set and our island vacation drew to a close, we were so happy to have been able to go, even though we didn't get as brown as we'd wanted. In fact the only color change we experienced was blue lips after freezing in the water. I'd love to go back, but I think next time I'll pay more attention to the extended forecast. When I'm in the mood for cold weather along the ocean, I generally prefer visiting Norway... or Greenland... or Antarctica.