Apologies in advance to any Calgarians who may read this, in fact to anyone who is not here! We have had an amazing couple of days introduction to life on Turtle Reef where we are staying with the delightful Mary and Basil. Mary has kept us very busy getting to know the island and seems bent on showing us both a good time before we start volunteering tomorrow.
On our first full day here we were invited to lunch down the beach by some friends of Mary and Basil, a lovely retired German couple who live about 2 miles down the beach from where we are. We had a lovely time getting to know them and then walked back to Mary's home along the beach at low tide. It was completely spectacular and we stopped many times to pinch ourselves and consider how lucky we were to not be in the frozen tundra that Calgary has become. Here are a few pics to ogle over...
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Jen's starfish
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| Helen's starfish and glorious beach in the background |
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| This is what the beach looks like at low tide - beautiful but hard on the feet! |
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| Our lunch hosts Karl and Eva - lovely retired German couple |
Our evening was spent at a moonlight jazz fundraising event in a place called Garden of the Groves. The event was to raise funds for the nursery and we were treated to live jazz, appetizers and coconut rum drinks that matched Helen's blue-green dress!
On Saturday we were joined by Mary's friend Sonya and we loaded up the truck with kayaks and spent the day snorkelling and kayaking. Again - completely spectacular! We first stopped at a beach with a "blue hole" that we were able to snorkel around. It is formed when the roof of an underground cave collapses and there are thousands of tropical fish and reef formations around it. Then we went on to the very end of the island where we put in and kayaked for a few hours. Helen saw a stingray and we all saw lots of bonefish that were hiding in the shallows. We kayaked around an exclusive fishing retreat and then anchored on a reef where we snorkelled for an hour or so. Helen got to swim with another stingray (while keeping a respectable distance!) and we saw all kinds of gorgeous fish - the colours were so vivid. There were lion fish (apparently an invasive species here), parrot fish, lobsters, crabs, bright blue and yellow fish, anemones galore... we could have stayed there all day but the light was fading so we headed back. As we packed up a boat came to shore captained by a friend of Mary's who had been fishing for the day and he decided to give us a huge Martin snapper which we cooked up for dinner!
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| Snorkelling at the blue hole |
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| The take out bar |
We stopped at this little bar to buy some local beers for the drive home - gotta love the relaxed "Island attitude", and were treated to this sunset on the way home... no complaints from us!
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| Sunset on night #2 |
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