Today we woke up and had a chill morning at the Airbnb waiting for the time to pick up our Jeep rental. It was a really weird rental time – basically noon to noon the next day. All vehicles on the island were apparently sold out — even though it didn’t feel very busy to us! About an hour before noon, Mark headed off on the long walk to the Avis rental car place. It was a 1 1/2 mile walk. We ended up with an awesome neon yellow Jeep Wrangler and it was so fun to drive around in it all day long! We threw our cooler and beach bag and dry clothes in the back and headed off for our first snorkeling adventure.
We started out at the Mosquito Bay Pier. It was a long jetty going way out into the ocean and then a pier at the end of that had long concrete pillars anchoring deep into the ocean floor. We were the only ones there and it was a little windy and overcast, so it was kind of intimidating! Once we scoped it out, the plan was to walk to the near end of the pier with our snorkeling masks, jump off the pier into the deep water, and then snorkel among the pillars as we worked our way back to shore
Of course, the three of them jumped in relatively quickly. I took my time and waited a few minutes while some other tourists gathered around to watch how crazy we were. Nothing like an audience to make me go faster! Once we were all in the water and our masks were ready, we started snorkeling. At first, it was almost hard to get our orientation because the water was so incredibly deep and there really wasn’t much to see. But once we got over to the pillars and really started looking, it was amazing! Each pillar was absolutely covered in baby coral growth. There were a little fans and little brain corals, and all sorts of rainbow colors. We would swim in and out and through the pillars, looking at all the fish. Almost immediately we found a sea turtle and followed it through the pillars and out into the open water. We watched her come up and take a few breaths and swim around for a little bit before she took off. Of course, swimming with a sea turtle again was extra special!
Then we started swimming towards shore and through the pillars. We saw a pod of huge barracuda down on the ocean floor. They had to have been 6 feet or longer! We also saw lots of angelfish and other tropical fish. There were weird pipes that were sort of open tunnels that the fish seem to like to gather around and even swim into. It was just like swimming through an underwater forest or something. Very surreal and really unique experience.
Once we made our way to the end of the pier, we headed right and had to work our way along the very rocky jetty shoreline to get to a set of stairs. At first, there really wasn’t much to see, but then we came upon a really nice reef area where the corals were starting to grow. And there was a beautiful purple fan lots of little coral pieces that were growing, and I even saw a bright green moray eel! Its mouth was opening and closing and it was sort of looking at me and swaying with the underwater breeze. As I got to the end of my swim, I saw two bright orange starfish! They were the really thick kind that we don’t seem to have in Florida. It was really cool to see them underwater!
After we had a snack, we hopped in the jeep and headed across the island over to an area that had several beaches for us to explore. Our goal was to see Secret Beach and Blue Beach. We headed to Blue Beach first and the road was incredibly bumpy! It wasn’t as bad as the bioluminescent road, but it was definitely an exciting ride. There were tons of wild horses on the side of the road as we traveled, and they’re just so beautiful. Sometimes we even saw a mama and a baby!
Once we made our way to Blue Beach, we headed down to the shoreline with our snorkels ready to go again! It was overcast but we could tell that the water was spectacular. Blue Beach was a giant white sand beach speckled with a few people here and there. Out in the water was a small island and that was where we needed to go in order to find the reef.
We hopped in the water and started swimming over lots of beds of seagrass. I knew that this would be a good spot for a turtle and sure enough Mark quickly called us over because he spotted one. We swam with this beautiful sea turtle for a long time! It swam in the grass, took lots of different breaths and eventually swam over and nestled itself underneath a little ledge. We took that as a signal that she was ready for a nap and we let her have some peace.
Then we swam over to the island and enjoyed snorkeling along the rocky coral reef area. This had a lot of marine life! We saw two lion fish and lots of different slugs and fish and everything. The water was nice and calm. It was easy to paddle and nobody got sick. It was a perfect experience! The only reason why we left was because we were running out of sunlight and we wanted to still sneak over to Secret Beach.
Secret beach was down a small little rocky path, and it opened into a perfect little horseshoe of a beach. It was drizzling by this time and we were the only ones there. We had talked to some people in the parking lot who said that the snorkeling wasn’t that great, so we all sort of decided that we didn’t really wanna get wet again. But we had a good time walking on the beach and because the parking lot was so secluded it was a good spot to put on our dry clothes for the rest of the night!
Once we were done at secret beach, and the dry clothes were on, we headed to the main town of Esperanza. We thought we were going to go to Black Sand Beach, but when we drove through the downtown of Esperanza, we noticed that the sun was setting and it was just a really cool sort of sunset vibe. We took some pictures on a swing hanging from a palm tree and we enjoyed watching the sun set behind the little mountain. After that, we grabbed a nice local dinner at a place called Bananas. It was open air seating with little twinkling lights. I had the paella, Owen had fish, Kaia had a fish sandwich and Mark got some type of fish mofongo. The food wasn’t our favorite, but it was nice eating outside and the day was so good that nothing could ruin it!
We needed more water and some lunch for tomorrow, so we stopped at a cute little place called the Green Market and stocked up. Now we are back at the Airbnb. Our towels are drying in the dryer. Everybody’s taking turns in the shower and we’re going to go to bed early because the roosters kept us up a lot last night!
