Communication is Key

            We decided to change things up a bit this morning and instead of having Luke bike up to meet us, we drove down to his house to meet him. Arden was just waking up when we got there so it was perfect timing!

            We took off from there almost right away and made our way to that out of the way road we had found the day before which took us to the far end of Samara beach. We sat on the beach for a little while and had a breakfast consisting of lots of local fruit and some hard boiled eggs. After that we left dad with Arden this time and Luke, Mom, and I headed off down the point with our snorkel gear to find a good launching spot. 

            I had decided to borrow dad’s snorkel mask this time because mine had really hurt the bone on the underside of my nose while snorkeling yesterday and dad’s mask was made of rubber while mine was made of plastic. Turns out the thing had hardly any seal on my face and after several nose-fulls of water within a 2 minute time span, I decide it wasn’t a good idea to try and spend the next several hours swimming in it. I swam the short distance back to shore, shouted back “I’m going to go get mine” and headed quickly off back over the rocks and down the beach. 

I waved a quick hello to dad and Arden, explained the situation, and headed back off to the point with my own snorkel in toe.  By the time I got my flippers and mask on and had launched myself back into the water, I found that Mom and Luke were no longer in sight. Thinking I would just swim out a little ways and find them just over that next wave, I soon found out that my phobia of murky water was a little worse than I had thought. I must have spent the first 10 minutes hyperventilating and trying to get myself calmed down, and suddenly finding myself directly on top of a sting ray at one point definitely didn’t help.

It finally became evident to me that I probably wasn’t going to find them from the water, the waves rising up in either direction to block my view, so I aimed myself in the direction of Isla Chora and prayed that my legs and mind would hold out since it was shorter by this time to swim to the island instead of back to the mainland.

A good 10 minutes later of swimming against the currant I was stumbling out of the water and onto the rocky beach of Isla Chora, tripping over my flippers the whole way, and who should I find coming out of the water a little ways down the beach but Mom and Luke. Despite having left the launch off point a good 5 minutes after them, I had still beaten them to the beach. I must say, I was not the happiest at being left but apparently they hadn’t understood that I was coming back.  They just thought I had called it quits and gone back to hang out with Dad for the day. Oh communication! 

I cannot tell you how glad I was to finally reach that island!

            Mom and I sat on the beach for a little while to give my legs a little rest and Luke headed back out to the water to see if he could spear something.  Mom and I followed suit shortly thereafter and went out to swim the reef. 

            Apparently not much of the reef surrounding the area is alive anymore as much of it died after the huge earthquake in 2006. It was still cool to see what we did but I wonder what it looked like when it was alive!  The water was a little murkier than I would have liked as well, but by this time the tide was coming in and bringing a bunch of the murk with it.

            On the way back to the place we came in, a fair sized turtle rose up off the reef below me and swam off towards deeper ocean.  I followed it for a ways and it was cool to swim along with it for a while before I turned around and headed back to Mom and Luke. 

            After that, Luke and Dad took the fishing tackle and went to do some fishing off the beach and Mom and I hung out in the shade with the beebs. Nothing was caught this time either but can I just say, there are A LOT of pelicans around! They like to hang out in fair sized flocks on the water and it’s really fun to watch them fly up then drop and dive into the water.

She absolutely LOVED emptying that bag of fishing tackle, watching us put it back, and doing it all over again!

             We left the beach well into the afternoon and Luke and I did some hanging out around town while Mom and Dad drove off to Carillo to inquire about some horseback riding tours. We went and got some ice cream from a local bakery, took a stop in the “ICE” store to get a sim card for my phone (only $2 and now I can actually make calls within the country!), and then a bit of strolling around town to look at a bunch of the souvenir shops. I finally found a new pair of sunglasses that I liked since my old ones are just that; old. All scratched up and well loved indeed.

            When Mom and Dad got back, the sun was starting to sink and we headed back to the hotel to make ourselves some dinner.  Anna joined us shortly thereafter from school and we had a nice evening catching up and talking over another awesome, Luke prepared meal.