After being cooped up on the boat most of the weekend due to stormy weather, Vlad and I decided to check out the little beach on Santa Catalina. We snorkeled through tropical fish, sea anemones and coral growing up the sides of the cliffs and poked around edges of the dark opening of an underwater cave. I love these underwater adventures - the schools of colorful fish, the coral growing up like stalagmites from the sea floor, and the way the sunlight refracts through the water and dapples the sand almost like a reverse shadow. A pretty sweet way to spend the afternoon.
While walking back across the footbridge into town, we saw a school of leopard rays swimming along beside it, and we thought, hey, let's swim with them too. So we put on our masks and snorkels, jumped off the bridge and followed (one might say, stalked) three of them. They looked like a mixture between ghosts and birds flying through the water.
To top off the day, Kennedy, a local tour guide who was making fresh conk and coconut stew for two Colombian tourists at Santa Catalina, came by our boat with two bowls of the stew and a handful of fresh basil so that we could make our own. Which we did last night, with fresh coconut and more of the tuna that Vlad caught. Yeah, we love this place.
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ReplyDeleteWe can't! Providencia doesn't have much in the way of internet, and we've been having trouble with Skype. I can barely load photos on the blog. But we should be in Panama in a week or so, and we will be back in the land of internet phone calling.
DeleteWow, that's so cool! Leopard rays are totally on my bucket list. I don't know about conch and coconut stew. Tell me it was good and didn't taste 'fishy'. I will have to learn to eat things like conch, I suppose. Just now, if it crawls on the bottom of the sea I consider it to be an insect and I don't eat those in this lifetime. Conch are just insects with a really, really hard exoskeleton. So tell me it tasted good. Maybe the coconut was the front and center flavor.
ReplyDeleteIt did not taste fishy at all. In fact, it was the best conch I've ever had, not the least bit chewy. Vlad even ate his, and he is not a big fish fan. If it tastes remotely fishy, he won't touch it. And never fear, a conch is not an insect. It's merely a snail. You know, just like eating escargot. :)
DeleteA snail with a big exoskeleton! Shudder. I'm with Vlad. If it's chewy or fishy, no way. But I love coconut.
ReplyDeleteI am so looking forward to snorkeling! Just whenever. Awesome visuals. So these rays...they can't sting you?
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