Wed, 24 Feb

Wed, 24 Feb A beautiful sunrise this morning ... right out our bedroom window ... then Marie and i went out on the fore-reef by our rooms to snorkel ... just for fun ... no observations today. she wanted me to have a good day of snorkeling before i left .... which means my time is short here ... tomorrow is supposed to be cold and rainy again, so this could be my last day. we had a lot of fun. Marie is a lot of fun; we get along well together; and i'll miss her. me snorkeling on the fore reef we snorkeled out deep, but things to see are so far down.... so we headed in to shallower water. the jelly fishes were everywhere and stinging like crazy, it was irritating. she does some 'free diving', so she was giving me some lessons on how to do it. basically, you take several deep breathes, and then hold your breath, and do a 'surface dive' ... she calls it a 'duck dive' straight down. then when you get to the bottom, you level out and swim and follow fishes and lobsters. you also need to equalize the pressure in your ears as you go down. she can go down and stay down a long time, but she says not as long as Alex and Brian. i am a novice in comparison; but it is fun because you can get up close and personal with the fish and corals... and they don't seem to mind. a Trumpet Fish we found a couple of very large lobsters and she filmed them ... check out the video on You Tube .............. pic of Brian and i before he left for Long Caye after lunch, i worked on trying to irrigate my ears ... with not much luck ... then i wanted to go out to the lagoon to snorkel one more time ... Marie let me use her camera again ... and i took a few photos. the visibility was only about 6 feet, and it was getting pretty dark and choppy. but i perservered ... pic of a school of very small fishes a nice big Sea Cushion ... in a beautiful shade of golden this time. it extended over an inch beyond my out-stretched hand .... i had not seen this shade of purple in an anemone before .... maybe it was because the sky was getting so dark ... and so many different colors of anemones .... all together ... they were so pretty ! and this little hermit crab inside his nice conch shell ... perched atop a bed of soft coral on a small reef in the lagoon after snorkeling i helped Marie input some data and then we went to watch the sunset. i had not seen a sunset since i've been out to Glovers ... i guess i've always been busy at that time; and it sets by the dock on the other side of the caye. not that it's that far ... but ... i've just never gotten out there. ....tonight Marie insisted we stop our data entry, so we made a special point to go to the end of the dock and catch it. it wasn't spectacular, but it was a big red ball and we got some nice photos ... Marie and i ... we're happy ! Marie, Stumpy and me the sunset and the palapa at the end of the dock ... the wind picked up this evening ... it was blowing the sand so strong that it hurt your legs to walk! it was brutal! ......i can't imagine what hurricane winds are like out here, ...and don't want to know either!