Eleuthera Journal, day 3

Monday 3/20:

Got up fairly early so we could go out and look at the coral reefs while the sun was shining on the Atlantic side of them. Beth and David and I went out there, but Beth had a lot of trouble with her snorkel and kept swallowing a lot of water. I think it was choppier than it had been the day before; I had quite a bit of trouble as well. We ended up going back in and sitting and relaxing on the beach. I found that swimming with other people was a lot more stressful and difficult than doing it by myself. I think it’s because you have to try to see where everyone else is, which means going up above the surface and then you have to be careful that your snorkel doesn’t dip in the water, and treading water and trying to talk and things is just a lot more difficult.

I went out again a bit later and swam around and looked at various fishes and things. Stayed near the shore so as not to worry Beth, but still a lot of neat things to be seen. I saw the sting ray again. I think it’s probably a couple of feet across and maybe four feet long including its tail. Rather impressive, really.

We were sort of out of food by this point, but I had something resembling lunch of crackers and peanut butter. Peggy and David and Margaret drove off to find another grocery store and to look for a restaurant that had been recommended to us. I went out and did another bit of swimming, found a school of jacks, which have sort of a vee-shaped tail. The jacks come in a few different varieties, but they seem to mostly be yellow jacks and bar jacks. Swimming around in between them were maybe six to ten barracudas. I think that’s what they were, in any case, as they were very long and skinny and I haven’t been able to find any other kind of fish that would look like that (in the book that’s here). I was a little disturbed and kept my distance. But still very interesting. I also saw a number of other kinds of fish including something that was possibly a queen triggerfish. There’s a picture of one here which captures the rough feel of how it looks pretty well. Extremely colorful with almost iridescent blues and yellows. A bit more than a foot long. Oh, and I saw a fish that I’d also seen earlier in the day, which is blue with very bright stripes on the front half of it, but then sort of a dullish green-yellow on the back half. Maybe six inches long and sort of oblong in shape. Apparently it’s called a blue-headed wrasse and is the super-male form of it (although they do seem to be very plentiful, which I wouldn’t have expected if it was a more rare phase, so to speak). A lot of these wrasses change gender, apparently, sometimes more than once.
Here’s a picture of a blue-headed wrasse. This one isn’t as colorful as the ones I saw, I guess because in an aquarium it doesn’t eat coral?

I’ve been bitten by a great number of something or others. Not really sure what they are, but they’ve mainly attacked my legs and ankles in particular. I wonder if there are fleas in the beds here? Not sure what else would be the likely culprit, but some of the bites are getting kind of swollen. Kind of annoying.

Took a nap late in the afternoon as I was quite tired from all the swimming, I guess. Felt much more rested after that, and then we headed off to dinner pretty early, leaving at quarter of six or something, which suited me fine since I hadn’t really had much of a lunch.

For dinner we went to this other restaurant, which is at a hotel a little north of us on the island. It had a real menu (quite a change from the other place) and a stunning view of the ocean. The sunset was a little disappointing because it was kind of hazy. Also, we were on the atlantic side of the island and so get the sunrise rather than the sunset. Beth had got up early this morning and watched the sunset while eating breakfast. The food was very good, if a bit heavy and rich. Beth and I both had cracked conch, which was battered and fried, and half a lobster tail. I was tempted by their steak, but it seems silly to not have seafood while I’m here. Also had a margarita, which was quite strong; I felt decidedly tipsy. Decided against having a second, although it was extremely tasty.

When we got home from dinner, I was quite exhausted, but had a fair bit of trouble sleeping, actually. I think my stomach was unhappy because of the richness of the food, and then that was combining with feelings of extreme itchiness, which were definitely not helping. Eventually I did get to sleep, although I can’t say I slept extremely well.