St John - The first Time - again Day 4
Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2011 8:52 pm
Day 4 – Friday – June 29th.
Today we have selected Waterlemon as our snorkel of choice. It is pretty windy again and Leinster Bay is quite protected, so if nothing else, we can at least stay in the Bay and snorkel with the turtles and rays. Not too much to see at first but then I hear someone whistle (has to be one of my sisters) and raise my head to hear her yell – EAGLE RAY! I swim toward her as fast as I can and sure enough, I catch up to it. It wasn’t in any hurry to go anywhere, so my husband and I swam with it for about 10 minutes. Wow – 2 days snorkeling and 2 EagleRays! I’m a happy camper
As expected it’s a little choppy around the Cay, but not rough enough to stop us from swimming around it. On the front side of the Cay we run into hundreds of Sea Stars.
They are in pretty shallow water and are gorgeous. No matter how many years I see them, I’m always still impressed when I see so many of them in one place. I just relax and hover over them for a long time – it’s kind of like a religious experience for me.
The Pelicans were having fun dive-bombing into the silversides . At times they dove in close enough to me that I could get pictures of their inflated pouches.
Husband found an Octopus, but he couldn’t be coaxed out of his den. After our Waterlemon snorkel, three of us decide to hike the Johnny Horn trail and the other two will go back to the Annaberg parking lot to get the car and meet us at the Moravian Church.
We were racing to see who would get their first. As expected they beat us by about 10 minutes. We head to the villa for lunch and a short break before our afternoon snorkel.
We decide on Francis Bay for this afternoon’s snorkel. We park and hike down the Trail to get closer to where we want to start (the rocks on the right). It is starting to look a little rainy, but nothing too serious. We see a gorgeous shell
and a HUGE octopus in his den (alas, he didn’t want to come out to greet us) I would have loved to see how big he actually was. From the looks of all the shells by his front door, he had quite an appetite! We snorkel almost to Mary’s Point. I look up to see where my husband was and the sky looks much more ominous than before. I can see that it is already raining in sheets by Maho and it’s coming our way. Sure enough we are stuck in a torrential rainstorm. The rain is COLD so we decide that being in the water is warmer then being out of the water.
Finally it lets up and we head to the car. We are all very chilled, so another “first” for us – we drive our rental car with the heater on!. On the way home we realize that we have left doors and windows open at the villa so anticipate a lot of cleanup when we get back to the villa. Boy we’re we right – rain everywhere – that’s a mistake we won’t make again – close things up before you leave, even if it doesn’t look like rain. We probably spent at least an hour mopping up water, cleaning window sills, wringing out wet clothes (that had been on the line). We even had to dry out some of the area rugs in the house. We try to be very responsible villa guests, so we want to make sure the rain didn’t cause any damage to anything in the villa.
After clean up , we notice that a power line pole down from our villa is on fire – I’m guessing it must have been struck by lightning. The fire is just burning on the top of the pole but still, that can’t be good
. My husband tries to find a number for the fire department, but there isn’t one in the phone book – Hm…glad our villa isn’t on fire. He takes the car to the Coral Bay fire station to let them know about the fire and a while later they arrive. The pole they need to get to is quite a ways off the road and through a lot of thick foliage. After a while they send someone in with a hose and we see them spraying water towards the top of the pole. However, their hose isn’t long enough to reach the file. Meanwhile, the transformer has fallen off the pole and as expected, our electricity goes off.
Anyway to make a long story short (Too late!) the whole thing was quite comical to watch from our balcony and the Power Company came to the rescue and had one of their guys climb the pole to put out the fire. I’m not sure I’d want to climb a pole that is on fire, but hey, I guess that’s probably why they get paid the “big bucks”.
We are off to Skinny Legs for dinner tonight since they’ll be closed for the next few days (for the 4th of July holiday). Had a good meal, but the no-see-ums practically ate us alive!
Off to bed after another busy day.
Tomorrow: Haulover North and Pelican Rock (for the second time).
Today we have selected Waterlemon as our snorkel of choice. It is pretty windy again and Leinster Bay is quite protected, so if nothing else, we can at least stay in the Bay and snorkel with the turtles and rays. Not too much to see at first but then I hear someone whistle (has to be one of my sisters) and raise my head to hear her yell – EAGLE RAY! I swim toward her as fast as I can and sure enough, I catch up to it. It wasn’t in any hurry to go anywhere, so my husband and I swam with it for about 10 minutes. Wow – 2 days snorkeling and 2 EagleRays! I’m a happy camper
As expected it’s a little choppy around the Cay, but not rough enough to stop us from swimming around it. On the front side of the Cay we run into hundreds of Sea Stars.They are in pretty shallow water and are gorgeous. No matter how many years I see them, I’m always still impressed when I see so many of them in one place. I just relax and hover over them for a long time – it’s kind of like a religious experience for me.
The Pelicans were having fun dive-bombing into the silversides . At times they dove in close enough to me that I could get pictures of their inflated pouches.
Husband found an Octopus, but he couldn’t be coaxed out of his den. After our Waterlemon snorkel, three of us decide to hike the Johnny Horn trail and the other two will go back to the Annaberg parking lot to get the car and meet us at the Moravian Church.
We were racing to see who would get their first. As expected they beat us by about 10 minutes. We head to the villa for lunch and a short break before our afternoon snorkel.
We decide on Francis Bay for this afternoon’s snorkel. We park and hike down the Trail to get closer to where we want to start (the rocks on the right). It is starting to look a little rainy, but nothing too serious. We see a gorgeous shell
and a HUGE octopus in his den (alas, he didn’t want to come out to greet us) I would have loved to see how big he actually was. From the looks of all the shells by his front door, he had quite an appetite! We snorkel almost to Mary’s Point. I look up to see where my husband was and the sky looks much more ominous than before. I can see that it is already raining in sheets by Maho and it’s coming our way. Sure enough we are stuck in a torrential rainstorm. The rain is COLD so we decide that being in the water is warmer then being out of the water.
Finally it lets up and we head to the car. We are all very chilled, so another “first” for us – we drive our rental car with the heater on!. On the way home we realize that we have left doors and windows open at the villa so anticipate a lot of cleanup when we get back to the villa. Boy we’re we right – rain everywhere – that’s a mistake we won’t make again – close things up before you leave, even if it doesn’t look like rain. We probably spent at least an hour mopping up water, cleaning window sills, wringing out wet clothes (that had been on the line). We even had to dry out some of the area rugs in the house. We try to be very responsible villa guests, so we want to make sure the rain didn’t cause any damage to anything in the villa.
After clean up , we notice that a power line pole down from our villa is on fire – I’m guessing it must have been struck by lightning. The fire is just burning on the top of the pole but still, that can’t be good
. My husband tries to find a number for the fire department, but there isn’t one in the phone book – Hm…glad our villa isn’t on fire. He takes the car to the Coral Bay fire station to let them know about the fire and a while later they arrive. The pole they need to get to is quite a ways off the road and through a lot of thick foliage. After a while they send someone in with a hose and we see them spraying water towards the top of the pole. However, their hose isn’t long enough to reach the file. Meanwhile, the transformer has fallen off the pole and as expected, our electricity goes off. Anyway to make a long story short (Too late!) the whole thing was quite comical to watch from our balcony and the Power Company came to the rescue and had one of their guys climb the pole to put out the fire. I’m not sure I’d want to climb a pole that is on fire, but hey, I guess that’s probably why they get paid the “big bucks”.
We are off to Skinny Legs for dinner tonight since they’ll be closed for the next few days (for the 4th of July holiday). Had a good meal, but the no-see-ums practically ate us alive!
Off to bed after another busy day.
Tomorrow: Haulover North and Pelican Rock (for the second time).
