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Tuesday February 27th
This was the day for our snorkeling trip at Caño Island. We had a later start so we had time to walk around the gardens and look for the
other beach. And find some more birds.
The bird on the rock is a hawk, but whether it was a black or broad-winged wasn’t decided. The pair of birds are black vultures, on what seems to be their favourite beach.
When we were shuttled out to the dive boat, we were kitted out with mask, snorkel, fins, and thin inflatable life jacket. When it became apparent that the snorkeling would only be from the boat, Sandie and Gill decided to back out and stay on the island’s beach. If you’ve never snorkeled before it’s a lot easier to learn in waist deep water; leaping off a boat into 10 feet of water just isn’t a good idea. If we’d realized that before we’d have chosen a different excursion.
Caño Island is about 20 miles offshore so the boat is at full blast nearly all the way. We had life jackets for our ferry trip the previous day but not for this one, which we found a bit odd. Presumably dive boats have different rules but regular life jackets would be a good ideal for the transit to 
the island.ññ
We paused long enough to pick up a pod of dolphins and then took off again with them playing in our wake, lots of fun for all of us. Amazing how fast they can go.
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On reaching the island, Sandie and Gll were dropped off at the beach, literally as there’s no dock so it’s a wet landing. The rest of us went snorkeling in an area bordereñd by large rocks, with quite a swell. It was my first time snorkeling in 23 years but that didn’t seem to be a problem. Back when I was a kid snorkels had a cage and ping pong ball to keep the water out but that seems to be a lost technology. These open ones must be a problem for beginners.
The novelty for me was that Iñ could see! With short sight I always had to swim within inches to recognize a fish and quite often I would lose track of which beach I was on. Since my cataract operations I can now see well underwater.
I found quite a few fish, some very colourful, and I took lots of pictures. The show there is not as good as the Great Barrier Reef but it’s definitely better than Brighton beach!
After an hour in the water I was pretty much worn out and climbing back into the boat was very hard. I had to bend to get my fins off and I think I lost my waterproof camera out of my pocket at that point. Unfortunately I didn’t realize until I got my gear off and it was too late to go back down and find it. Of 
course I lost all that day’s pictures so you’ll just have to imagine my encounters with the great white shark and giant squid, just like I did
.
Those of us that were too tired for the second dive were dropped off at the beach for about a half hour and then we all returned to a sandy beach on the mainland for lunch.
On our way we met this olive ridley turtle, small as sea turtles go. We don’t know what the spiky white thing is unless the turtle was carrying a packed lunch, a sea cucumber sandwich perhaps.
After returning to the inn we still had time to go back to the gardens and find our local beach, on the edge of the village. The composite above shows some of the flowers we found in the gardens over the two days. Of course they are just gardens, planted with exotic and colourful species to make the guests happy. In that they succeeded.