Well after a couple of days of westerly winds and a fair bit of bouncing around on the mooring ball the wind finally clocked around to the east and now the chop is significantly less and being on the boat is much more comfortable. In this particular mooring field there is a large expanse of water to the west with no protection so the fetch (as we boater call waves when they are created by the wind across an open area of water) makes sitting here on the mooring rather bumpy. To the east is the island and so the when the wind swings around from that direction the water flattens out and there is relatively little wave action, finally.

This also means that it’s better for snorkeling, easier to swim, easier to see and lots more fun. Still I can’t complain the last couple of days here at the Exuma Land and Sea Park have been great even though we didn’t get in any snorkeling. The girls loved the birds, hermit crabs, and lizard all so tame you could feed them by hand. They also liked the Hotias, which are supposedly nearly extinct although we saw plenty of them on our numerous walks on the island. Additionally the girls had plenty of fun on the beaches, looking at all of the shells and sea creatures and doing hours of cartwheels, handstands and such.

Even Paul enjoyed the hiking and the beaches but let me add here that he didn’t do any cartwheels or handstands or such. There is no fishing or taking of any kind; even empty shells here at the Exuma Land and Sea Park so it is a look only spot. That has stopped Paul’s new fishing experiment for the moment. Too bad, I’ll be ready to have more fish by the time we leave here.

Snorkeling this afternoon was fun we saw a number of beautiful fish on the small reefs here in the park. We chose to do some of the smaller reefs in shallow water for the girls and it was great. Warm water and lots of fish made it ideal for everyone. Nicole and Claudia saw 3 stingrays and we all got to look at a number of crabs, conch, live coral, and an incredible variety of fish. The colors here are amazing, coral can be purple or pink or yellow. The fish have black and blue, purple and yellow, and many other combinations, stripes, spots, stripes the other way, it’s great. I don’t have any photos of the fish or the reef because we don’t currently have an underwater camera but you can look on line and see much of what we are seeing in person. Fantastic!