Skyflower 2013 Trip Report - Part2 (Sat-Mon)

[dreamshark]

SATURDAY - Jul 13

6:30AM Lovely dawn, then a sudden, short hard rain, soaking all the clothes left out on line overnight. Oops. Quickly gone, leading to another beautiful sunny day. R sleeps in until 8:00 when I roust him out. Note to self: the House Binder had warned that even with the 10-foot-wide balcony roof, the wind can drive rain through the east-facing screen doors. By golly, they were right! We start shutting all the glass sliders when we leave the house.

Dawn from Skyflower deck

Leisurely morning doing things like setting up a computer desk and wrestling with the mysteries of the Home Entertainment Center, so we only had time for one big mid-morning snorkel expedition instead of 2 smaller ones. We chose Little Lameshur (5.8 miles away, with the infamous last mile taking about half the driving time). Great choice - we arrived about 11 am and there were only 4 other cars there. Specifically, there were 4 beefy jeeps and one... Toyota Yaris??? How did anyone get a tiny Toyota through those 2-foot deep, boulder-lined puddles? There was NOBODY at the shady picnic tables - score! We thought we were incredibly lucky until we came back from our snorkel and found the beach overrun with 40 children from VIERS Eco camp and our stuff buried under piles of kid's towels and flip flops. It was a little annoying at the time, but funny in retrospect. My only regret is that I did not get before/after pictures of our "campsite."

Little Lameshur - before VIERS invasion

Long snorkel (for us) - over 90 mins. I swam all the way to the point on the left, R went almost that far. Water really rough outside of sheltering headland, wore me out. Nice canyons out there, wish I'd had the endurance to linger longer. In general, very good snorkel. We both saw lucky trunkfish. Most exciting thing was giant barracuda, 3-4 ft long. I've seen many barracudas that I thought were pretty big, but now that I've seen what a full-grown one looks like I realize that the others were mere children. I know they're harmless to snorkelers, but the sight of those big teeth is still pretty startling. Interesting that the bigger the barracuda, the deeper down it likes to hang out. The very small ones hang just below the surface of the water, but this one was on the bottom of maybe 6 feet of water. Interestingly, it was surrounded by mid-size fish who were swimming around it with total unconcern. I think if I were a 5-inch-long fish I would keep my distance from 4-foot barracudas. Just sayin'.

And we saw squid! I never saw more than 2 at a time, but Richard saw a more complicated social interaction. There were 3 big ones swimming along together which were briefly joined by a 3rd smaller one. They hung out together for a little while, then the smaller one zoomed off. Later in the trip, Leslie filled us in on the mating habits of squid (hint: it involves a 3-some). Now I wonder if the original trio were gently informing the newcomer that he/she was a 4th wheel.

Then we drove the jeep to the end of the road, which ended in 500 yards at the Lameshur ruins. Wandered around taking pictures for a little while - very photogenic spot!

Lameshur ruins

... then adjourned to the Tourist Trap about 1:30. So crowded we had to wait, so we offered to share our table with a couple of tanned and fit-looking middle-aged women who were in line behind us. One lived on the island; her friend was visiting, both avid snorkelers. Fun chatting with them. R got lobster roll, was not that impressed. I had pulled pork nachos, which were as huge and delicious as I remembered. Last year it was too much food to finish, but this time we were starving from our snorkeling exertions and easily polished off all the food. On the way out 'ca-caw' recognised us from VIOL (young couple on honeymoon). That was very cool! Thanks for saying hello, Mr. Ca-Caw!

6-8 PM Back at villa we had ice cream drinks in the hot tub and watched a little sunset storm roll by. The main storm missed us, but we got a bit of surprisingly cold rain. Hot tub felt good! The storm was followed by a bizarre meteorological event that totally delighted Richard: a sharp-edged blue cone extending upward from a cloud over the eastern BVIs. It lasted at least 20 minutes, then faded away. An alien transport beam, perhaps? Maybe even extraterrestrials enjoy a visit to the Virgin Islands. Great way for 2 science fiction fans to end the day.

What is Richard looking at?

It's the mysterious Blue Beam!

Oops, I've reached the picture limit for VIOL and got 2 days to go for this installment. What the heck, Now that the Astounding Blue Beam has been revealed, the rest of my pictures are pretty unremarkable. Here's another beach. Here's a fuzzy underwater picture of coral. Here's another shot of the view from our villa. Use your imagination.

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SUNDAY - Jul 14

6:45am Up an hour after dawn, made breakfast: eggs florentine w English muffins. Richard got up at 7:30 for that, finally giving us a chance to get an early start for the beach. Throughout our trip, every northside beach was crowded by 11am. I'm beginning to wonder just how "low season" July really is these days.

We were on the road for Hawksnest by 8:20, so we probably arrived by 8:45. The last time I visited this beach was in 2001, and we didn't like it much. My goodness, how it has changed! There is now a huge parking lot, attractive picnic shelters and changing rooms, and shady walkways offering multiple access points to the beach, even pit toilets. Donkeys were wandering around, but not rude (note foreshadowing!). The coral was in much better shape too. I think when we last visited, the elkhorn coral had been recently devastated by a storm. It's grown back now, providing a unique snorkelling experience. There are big shallow islands of colorful coral gardens, lots of big parrot fish, yellow tail damsels, all kinds of wrasses. We also saw 3 trunk fish, little barracuda, filefish, trumpetfish.

We stop at Lily's for a few groceries, still back to villa by noon. The perpetual SE breeze seems to be picking up force - more a gusty wind than a breeze now. It's beginning to be a little bit of a nuisance, in fact, regularly blowing clothes off the clothesline onto the deck. It does keep the place cool, though, which is a tradeoff I'm more than willing to make.

5:00 PM Late afternoon mangrove snorkel at Princess Bay, not entirely successful. Too late in the day and clouded over, so mangrove roots were dark and scary instead of magical. Since Richard was snorkeling sans fins, I took the opportunity to try out his new short fins and glided over the turtle grass. I LOVE the short fins - started wishing I'd found a pair of these for myself instead of investing in those ambitious dive fins. Saw lots of conch, a cute baby barracuda and one fat orange starfish.

Richard made another huge stir fry and we enjoyed more blender drinks from the hot tub watching more evening storms sail past us to the east. I made a very strong lime 'n coconut drink and then walked right thru one the slider screens. Oops. Fortunately we were able to fix it (screen just pulled out of the rubber bead) and went back to drinking in the hot tub.

2:00AM YIKES! We are awakened by a short, violent rain storm. Serious wind gusts, driving rain in even the north/south screens. From this point on we shut ALL the sliders in the great room before going to bed. But shutting the sliders in the bedroom would make it too stuffy, so we just rely on the fact that I am a light sleeper, ready to leap out of bed at a moment's notice and slam the windows shut, a little drama that is repeated several more times during our trip.

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MONDAY - Jul 15

I get R up early to go snorkeling, but he's feeling under the weather (still fighting that cold) and goes back to bed after breakfast. So I tinker around with the inscrutable Home Entertainment Center some more, discovering that the Dish Network offers Internet Radio as well as approximately 6 million weird and pointless TV channels. I settle on the obvious - Radio Margaritaville - and spend a few happy hours sorting pictures on my little travel laptop to the strains of Jimmy Buffet.

10:39AM Finally off to Kiddel to try out our new snorkel equipment on the beach that nearly defeated us last year. The heavy beach booties I had bought worked perfectly for dealing with all that rock, although they are a little hard to squeeze into the fins. Water clear, but very rough. Lots of fish, as always. Parrots, filefish. 5 squid that I am sure are part of last year's baby squid squad.

We relax in villa, R napping again, and suddenly it is almost 5pm and too late for snorkeling. So instead we explore the trail to Haulover North. Wow!! Hundreds of hermit crabs are partying in the low place in the middle of the trail! Okay, this you should see. I'm not sure how to embed a video anyway, so try following this link to the Soldier Crab Party:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzUIvMJvwts

Tuna salad sandwiches from Pickles for supper. Walked thru another screen door. Getting pretty good at reinstalling screen.

There's still one more adventure for Monday - our daughter and her husband are coming to join us tonight! Since that begins a whole new chapter of the trip, I'll save that for the next report.

[liamsaunt]

I have been enjoying your reporting. We were on island at the same time and I have been cross checking your report against mine to see if we were ever in the same place on the same day. No matches as yet.

You can add as many photos to your report as you want if you host them on a sharing site like flickr or tinypic and embed them into the report. I think the 5-picture limit is a tapatalk restriction, not VIOL.

Really cool blue beam in the sky...I have never seen that phenomenon before.

[mnfun2bme]

Thanks for continuing your report! It's always so fun to see how others spend their days on The Rock.

Loved the "blue beam"....... maybe Coconuts has an explanation for this.

P.S. You must have needed to walk carefully to get that video of all the crabs. That was some serious party going on.

[dreamshark]

Thanks for continuing your report! It's always so fun to see how others spend their days on The Rock.

Lots more to come! Thanks for letting me know that someone is reading it. I do tend to go on.

P.S. You must have needed to walk carefully to get that video of all the crabs. That was some serious party going on.

Fortunately all this activity was going on right at the point where someone had laid down boards in the mud for people to use as stepping stones. The crabs were mostly avoiding the boards, which made it much easier to walk through them. I don't think we squashed any of them. If anybody on island is reading this, I'd love to know if the crab party is still going on.

[pcs15]

Enjoyed the next installment - and am hoping there are still some screens left for our trip!

[michigan girls]

Loving your report - keep it coming!

Question on the mangrove snorkel - I've only ever done it from a boat and swam in. Where is the entry from land, and is it a relatively easy entry? I'm bringing my boys with me in a couple weeks and I think they would enjoy that snorkel, but they're snorkel newbies and I don't know how well they would handle a hard entry.

[Gretchen3]

Loving your reports so far. Thank you for sharing your time with us.
The "mysterious blue beam" looks like it could be a anticrepuscular ray.

http://en.rocketnews24.com/2012/08/25/m ... s-the-sky/

[ColumbiaSCTraveler]

Lameshur and Tourist Trap are on this year's "hopefully we'll visit" list.

That blue cone = SO COOL!!!!!!

[dreamshark]

Loving your reports so far. Thank you for sharing your time with us.
The "mysterious blue beam" looks like it could be a anticrepuscular ray.

I do believe you are correct! lprof also identified it, but the picture in you link is a better match for what we saw. I was excited to find out that it is a real phenomenon, but I think Richard was a little disappointed that it wasn't an alien portal, or at the very least an atmospheric phenomenon that nobody but us had ever seen.

[EagleRayLover]

Great report so far! It looks like the beginning of
The annual hermit crab migration!!