Day 7 - Thursday October 13, 2011

A little background  on how today's activity came to be....... I had read about and wanted to take a water taxi over to the small uninhabited island of Culebrita. It appeared to be a nice secluded location with some good beaches and good snorkeling. There is no one "official" water taxi but I had gathered a couple of numbers and tried calling them on Tuesday. First number, Capt. Luis is on the mainland so won't be able to take us, second number for Capt. Brad is a wrong number to some who does not speak English....... Trying to figure out what to do now, I find a number for Capt. Bill and when I call I get an answering machine to which I don't feel good about so I don't bother leaving a message, well a few minutes later, Bill calls me back. He explains that he doesn't do just a taxi to the island and has a catamaran on which he does a day's tour exploring different areas and we can even try to get some fishing in. Well for all this the price is right and we agree to take a trip with him on Thursday.
Well, today is Thursday so we are excited to see what will come of this day. We only have a small breakfast, take our Dramamine and head out to meet Capt. Bill.
We meet Bill and he brings us to his catamaran which is a beautiful 33' Pez Vela vessel. We are introduced to GiGi, his first mate. She is a small terrier mix dog and is more sea-worthy than a lot of people. Now we are on our way and make some small talk with Bill who we find out is originally from upstate NY but has lived here for 15 years.
We head over to Culebrita and stop on the south side of the island where Dave and I snorkel a bit. Like many places here, there is plenty of reef and because there is so much the fish are more scattered throughout rather than concentrated in one area. This area is also slightly murky and visibility is less in the deeper areas but we still see some interesting things.
Next we head over to Tortuga beach which is a different part of Culebrita. As we head into the cove we begin to see why it is called Tortuga(turtle) as we see plenty of turtles popping up all over  the place. GiGi also spots them and let us know where they are. Bill attaches to a bouy here and almost immediately a very friendly hawksbill turtle comes over to see what we're up to. Bill has us get in the water with her (he has named her Tina) and we swin around with her and are even able to pet shell as she swims by us. She is graceful in the water and considering that she has got to be at least 3 feet head to toe is an amazing thing to see.
Dave and I snorkel around some more and Bill begins to prepare lunch. Again we see a steady diet of the same things but I am happy to see that again there is so much healthy reef.
Bill is finishing our lunch while we dry off and get a bit warm. He has a small area on the side of the catamaran to prepare our lunch but he comes out with quite the feast. There is rice with veggies and sesame terriyaki mahi ........it was one of the best meals we had while here.
After lunch we tried our luck fishing. Bill caught some ballyhoo earleir which are smaller fish that are good for catching the bigger fish like wahoo, kingfish and the like, so he rigs up 3 poles and trolls them behind us and we go out to a little deeper water to see what we can get to bite.
After a few runs through an area in which Bill has had luck before, we don't get anything to bite. It has been a long day and it is time to head in before it gets too late. So, while we don't have any luck with fishing, we have a great day out on the water and Bill does not disappoint.
Tonight's dinner is at Heather's Pizza and we get an equivilent of a meat lovers and we leave there stuffed.
Another successful day of doing nothing special but yet still having a pretty special day.