Travel Talk

Snorkeling is Sensational

Good day,

In a land where cotton candy clouds rain french fries on old growth forests and and people work their entire lives to have their pensions routed into bailouts of wall street bozos, isn’t snorkeling simply sensational and divine? When is the last time you went snorkeling? I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve neglected such a serious sport for all too long, when you live near world class snorkeling, not only should it be done often but daily I say, daily! Let me tell you about a recent snorkeling trip I took during the day, when I would have been at work.  This trip involves an interesting cast and crew from all corners of this round globe we call home.

Here’s the deal on Little Corn Island, west side aka where I live is the town side, the east side is the “beach side” but I don’t care for it much and rarely go there, the south side is mainly homes and this cliff that you’d break your legs if you slept walk off as well as some ‘secluded beaches” behind Casa Iguana. To the north side there is beautiful beaches aka the best on the island, the least amount of people and guess what!? They are also building a great looking resort where you can buy buckled shoes and have a world class chef cater to every whim, sounds good – yes?

I digress, again.

Suffice to say we marched there, if you go from the west side aka town, should take you about 20 minutes or so. Once you cross the baseball diamond it’s just endless single track paths that weave in and around the landscape as you descend from the “mountain of 37 meters” to sea level. Once you arrive you can see the reefs, look around and see NOBODY. Drop your gear, hide your valuables and hit the water. We went with a “wolf dog” aka more wolf than dog that I feed daily, I even go as far as to get other people’s scraps to keep beefing this monster up, he’s loyal and my side kick but I digress once more…

We were snorkeling where the photo above is, fyi. The group was myself, an English gent from Australia,  a German man who wears a top hat everywhere, including snorkeling and a Slovenian lady who loved to party and sing songs like “White Wedding” by Billy Idol at 5am. We hit the water and began to swim, if you’re not a good swimmer I suggest you go with a boat, swimming out to some cool reefs takes time and lots of energy.

Once arriving at the reefs we saw two giant eagle manta-rays majestically gliding about, they came about 20 feet from me and could see them eye to eye just gliding without a care in the world, there were two of them. Moments later see some big snapper doing their thing, hmmm snapper, hmmm red snapper in particular. Finally we saw something that I’ll always remember and was truly epic in my opinion, a school of 20-40 barracuda.

You’re swimming there and suddenly you see one leering about like that creepy guy in the back corner of the club, moments later there are more. Then they are swimming on both sides of you. They look small from the front but once you get the side view you begin to see what they are really all about. In the spirit of disclosure, this freaked me out to no avail and even looked over to see if a friend was there only because that would increase my odds of survival should this pack of creatures with long pointed teeth turn into a tourism terror squad.

About an hour later, returned and sat down on this rock from the photo above, the furthest rock to the left. Sat there having a smoke while these flying fish began going nuts about 3 feet to my right then a swarm of fish which I assume are jacks went to town on these flying fish. Moments later a long silver fish literally ripped out of the water and just sailed until it did a nose dive later, it’s like it jumped a rock or something. Anyways all this from just “getting out there and going” aka not being lazy.

Tips hat with a TGIFesque smile,

P.S: If you’re going to a beach destination, be sure to try snorkeling as it’s a great activity for all ages / groups.

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