Saturday 21st April

Palmeras Island,
Aves de Sotavento

12 01.213 N
67 41.035 W

Happy Birthday Barb, STITCH! miss you.

The night was hot and humid, not a breath of wind, it made sleeping rather difficult, it’s a good job we hadn’t got to do much today. After breakfast and a few minor jobs it was time for some exercise, we decided that we were going to go snorkeling on the nearby reef. The snorkel gear went into the dink closely followed by us. We motored the short distance to shore where we beached the dink. A short walk along the beach found us staring at a huge pile of conch shells – the remains of a bumper harvest by the looks of things. There were 2 more huge piles further down the beach, we had to wonder if there was any conch left to find. The other thing we found were loads of plastic bottles, a great shame as the beach was ruined by them, we guessed that most of them must have been washed up on the beach but it is a bad reflection on boaties in general that these beautiful tropical beaches are being spoilt by trash which is non bio degradable. After our walk we donned the snorkeling gear and plunged into the water, the shallow shoreline quickly dropped off and we snorkeled around a reef in about 20 foot of water. Again we could have been in an aquarium, the tropical fish were plentiful and there was a huge variety. After snorkeling for about an hour Gerry’s head was getting sun burnt and we were both getting tired – it was time to go back to our boat for a shower and rest. I had taken the camera with me and shot lots of pictures but the lens fogged up and not a single one of them came out – I was very disappointed but will try again. Luckily Lorie had taken much the same group of photos so I have copies of hers. Gerry spent the afternoon checking his eyelids for light leaks whilst I did a bit of cooking and read my book. We joined Dale and Lorie on their boat for a delicious thrown together meal of pork and left over bits; watched the sun go down and then returned to our boat for the night.