Sunday At The Beach

Sunday At The Beach

We actually managed to find all the snorkeling stuff, bathing suits, beach towels, etc. last night, so this morning around 9:00 we headed to San Carlos. We made our Sunday breakfast stop at Marias Pizza, (the restaurant run by our friends there), where as usual, the food was good and the company entertaining. We couldn't decide exactly where to go for snorkeling and had by this time much advice and many suggestions. We started out by going to Playa Algodones; but decided that the waves were a bit bigger than we wanted. The waves here at any beach are not large; but we were looking for really calm. I had never snorkeled before and the sea seemed to be getting more immense each time I looked at it and thoughts of the strange creatures that make their home there were getting larger in my mind. We do not have wet suits/skins so I took along our bottle of vinegar just in case we encountered some jelly fish (it supposedly kills the stingers, then you are only left with the pain and a possible allergic reaction). Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Anyway, we continued on up the road to the Hotel Paradiso where we wandered around for awhile, we took a couple of other roads to the sea and decided to go back and try Pierdra Pintas beach. It is a bit more sheltered by some rocks and we thought it might be quieter. We looked around there for abit and decided that this was the place for today. Roy (at my urging) went into the water first, I said I would watch our stuff; but there were so few people around, mostly families, and the water looked so good that it didn't take me long to decide to get wet. I played around a little first, getting used to the waves and the feeling of weightlessness, (nice not feeling like a rock), before trying out the snorkeling thing. It wasn't as bad as I thought, I told Roy that maybe it was easier because I have so many allergies that half the time my nose/sinuses are plugged anyway and I am breathing through my mouth. Now isn't that just more information than you needed, it's not really that bad.

The water was the temperature of a lukewarm shower, you don't have to do anything to float because of the salt content, the sun was shining, there was only the tiniest of breezes, it was quiet and peaceful. Hmmmm, kind of sounds like paradise, doesn't it; especially when I looked at the weather in Alberta for today: high of 8 C. low of -2 C.. We saw lots of tiny little fish that were a light tan color; but when the sun lit them up they looked silver, some bigger ones of the same species and Roy saw some really nice purple ones. I didn't see those as I was staying closer in to the shore than he was. The water was really clear and Roy estimates that we could see approx. 15-20 feet down. He was more comfortable as he has done this before; although not in the sea. He said that when he was in Guatemala the area of the ocean where he was, was so dirty that he didn't want to snorkel. There were so many of the small fish that it felt like we were swimming around in an aquarium. We both had a great time and will be doing it again now that we are getting a little cooler land temperatures, the water will be warm enough for swimming for awhile yet. We got home around 3 PM, showered off the salt that had dried on us and vegged out, Roy has a nice rosy back and we were both tired. Thank goodness there were leftovers for supper as I didn't have the energy to cook, instead I went to the corner store, bought a newspaper and spent some time puzzling it out.