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Tuesday, February 23, Why Yes, That Was a Barracuda (Day 3)

Today we ventured out completely unsupervised! But using the great handout provided by our lovely hosts (Deanna, you would be impressed.), we had no problems reaching our destination – Secret Harbor. (It’s not actually that secret, by the way, but it is quite lovely.) It was a great little beach to do some snorkeling. I’d been before, but it was…ahem…maybe 23 years ago. Chad had never snorkeled….and until the last several years, I thought he hated the water. So off we headed to Secret Harbor, which looks like this if you happen to be viewing it from pretty far above.

At any rate, we soon arrived at Secret Harbor which was amazing. (Yes, I know I keep saying amazing and awesome and excellent, but seriously….this place….) How can you not look at that and think, “Wow, amazing”?

Thanks to the hosts with the mosts, we were completely stocked with chairs and snorkel gear and plenty of forewarning about the iguanas that hang out on the beach. Chad set up shop under this quite nice palm tree, next to a pretty sizable sea grape, uh, bush maybe? It’s definitely a sea grape something-or-other.

It was also the hangout of quite a few iguanas which made their entrance right as we were getting settled. Including this big ol’ boy who was just chilling on the back of the palm tree, taking everything in while us and the folks nearby gawked and took photos. This isn’t the sort of thing that happens back home to most folks! Check out the tail drag this dude left as he made his way from the sea grapes to the tree. Crazy!  (It was a really big iguana…I mean goodness, Chad’s in the photo just for scale. Har, har, har, pun not intended!)

Our first foray into the water went well, despite me seeing a barracuda like 5 minutes into the snorkeling. We were out between the peers (pictured below) when a long line of  fish went zipping by and then…this kinda long silvery dude.  And I immediately thought, “Holy sh!t, that’s a barracuda!” I jerked, tried to get Chad’s attention which is way easier to do on land, let me tell you, and sort of flailed and gawked at the same time.

He hadn’t seen it, thanks to being distracted by a different (and smaller) long silver fish called a Ballyhoo (oh yeah, using the fish identification guide like a pro!).

In between more snorkeling, we frolicked in the water. Ok, it wasn’t so much frolicking as wading out, feeling like we were getting dive bombed by pelicans, and taking photos that we could stare at longingly once we got back home to the frozen mountains of West Virginia.

The water was warm and glorious and oh so very nice. And Chad looked pretty happy standing in it, despite his wife constantly harping on him to “put on more sunblock” or “put on your sunblock shirt!” or “dude you will fry, what are you doing?” Because we all aren’t equally blessed with nice sun friendly olive skin!

Inevitably we found our way to the beach bar to have a nice, cool, refreshing, local beverage. It’s ones of the tenets of our vacations, you see. And talking to the bar tenders tends to yield pretty helpful information.

We had a glorious day of much more snorkeling where we saw loads of fish – parrot fish, blue tangs of varying sizes, yellow tailed snapper, sergeant majors, damselfish, feather dusters, possibly a ocean surgeon fish, loads of sea urchins, and yes, the barracuda again.

We were pretty worn out by then, so we headed back to the cottage to find it was just about time for cocktail hour.

And then we to the Pie Whole for some amazing pizza. Nom. Nom. Nom. What is it about pizza that makes me want to eat ALL THE PIZZA? Seriously, I had to stop myself from pizza cramming. (I didn’t eat it all though, we had leftovers and the cold pie was just as yummy as it was hot out of the oven.)

A last gratuitous shot of me and Ping before ending this day’s narrative.

Ok, you should know the drill. Click on the smaller photos to see the large versions along with captions so they make sense and you can be totally jealous of how much fun we have on vacation. Although, sadly, no barracuda photos. Or fish photos. We were having too much fun snorkeling to do that.

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