Santa Catalina with Isla Coiba

Its raining now.  Ryan is in a hammock under the roof reading, and I am brushing my hair one strand at a time after having it blown in violent boat wind for hours.  Perfect time to blog and scratch my bites.

This morning Ryan woke up and ran down to the beach to run for a bit while I was getting ready.  We had to meet our snorkel group at 8am in town.  When Ryan got back we walked down to a bakery/café that we found yesterday and had some breakfast.  I had cereal fruit and granola, Ryan had am omlette and toast, and we split a muffin.  We had coffee too of course.  The owner talked to us for a while and told us a little about the area, and gave us some insight to Kuna Yala.  We ordered two lunches to go and brought them with us to meet our group. 

a smoothie at the bakery

Our group was us, 4 Spaniards, and a guy from Seattle with his Scandinavian girlfriend.  The guy and his girlfriend were scuba diving, and the rest of us were for snorkeling.  After a brief intro, we wadded onto the boat, a dinky little thing with a tiny roof.  Once we were all settled we began the very choppy, bumpy hour long ride to our first dive.  I watched a Spanish guy and his girlfriend in a near-constant state of making-out. 

Ryan noted that the wrist strap to our water proof camera was loose and kind of big to be trusted snorkeling.  I must say I was impressed with myself when I took out my hair-tie and wrapped it around the cord a few times to make a little tightener thingy - it worked great!  How resourceful!

Since I only had coffee so far today, I sucked down the juice box from my packed lunch and put my flippers on.  Then the mask - I’m surprised I have any hair left on my head, those rubber straps really pull!

In we went, Ryan first, then me.  I’m always a little scared when I first jump in,.  We started paddling away from the boat, and began to see some fish swimming in front of us.  It was about this time that I was stung by my first jelly-fish, right on the thigh.  To be the first of many.  At least the jellies were small - thumb nail size to quarter size.

I shouted an expletive into my breathing tube and swam on.   Soon we were over a reef and below is were hundreds of teeny fish in schools, a handful of what looked like angel fish, and dozens of other large colorful fish.  All around us they swam, at times we seemed to be right in the middle of all the action.  We looked around a little more and then swam out to follow our guide to another section.  Nothing was really over there, I’d gotten stung about 2 more times, and Ryan’s facial hair was totally preventing his mask from creating a seal.  Needless to say we were ready to go back when the hour was up.

Back in the boat we bumped on over to Coiba Island - a national park.  The beach there was beautiful.  I booked it to the bathroom and closed my eyes to the spiders lurking in my stall, then we signed in at the ranger’s station. 

We hung on the Island for about 20 minutes watching crabs run around, admiring the scenery, etc.  We piled back in the boat to go to our second dive site.

On this dive we were able to see many more fish and I spotted several barracudas.   They hang by the surface and look pretty scary.  They didn’t come near me, but at times we were pretty close to them.  We got some video of them.  I’m glad that Ryan finally saw one.  I was worried he’d start to think I was crazy.  I’d claimed to see some in our Vietnam dive, and on our first dive of today, and he’d yet to see any.

We swam some more before getting back onto the boat, eating our olive loaf packed sandwiches, and returning to Coiba to drop off the Spaniards who were staying the night on the island.  We walked around the island some more, I said hello to the potty spiders again, and then is was back to the boat for our third and final dive.  This time we were the only snorklers, the other 2 were scuba. 

We hopped in, and again I’m getting stung by the jellies.  Ryan, the lucky dog, is so hairy that they couldn’t sting him if they tried.  Although, he’s not that lucky of a dog.  His poor little toe was being totally destroyed by the friction of the flipper, and was full on bloody by day’s end.

Anyway, were swimming around, I see more barracudas, and we swim next to eacher for a minute looking at fish.  Ryan’s taking video of some fish and moves the camera down a little.  What’s that in the murky distance? Is it?  It is!  It’s a sea turtle!  Its pretty big and swimming right on by.  Lucky we got some footage.  I pointed at it frantically even though Ryan was obviously already filming it.  I couldn’t believe it! After it was out of sight we surfaced and high fived over the sighting. 

It was around this time that a team of jellies decided that I’d had enough fun for one day.  I felt an electrical pricking and stinging all down my left forearm and right hand.  Those damn things sung me all at once.  I watched about 7 or 8 tiny welts appear on my arm and hand and that was that.  I booked it back to the boat after informing Ryan about the vendetta these animals apparently had our for me.  We swam back and waited for the divers to come back up. 

Once we were all aboard the boat was fired up and we were headed back to the mainland.  The scenery was beautiful, but soon were being pelted by sting rain as we raced on the clunker back to shore.  Eventually it let up.  We passed an even clunkier (that’s a word, right?) looking fishing boat, made a hairpin turn, and pulled right up to it.  Some dude jumped in to our boat from the fishing boat.  Ok.  Apparently he needed a lift.

Again we were off and soon we were pulling back up to the beach. We unloaded, returned our flippers, signed that wall on the dive center, and began the walk back to the hotel.  We stopped at a little tienda and bought a bag of yuca chips and an apple juice.  It started raining just as we got to the hotel.  We showered, I realized that my backside was bright read at my bathing suit line, we washed out our suits, and that brings us to now.  I still fell like I’m on a boat, the ground seems to be rising and falling.

We’ll be heading to a little Argentinian restaurant for dinner tonight.