We went back up to the area we were yesterday, looking for Porto Mari again. We found it this time, and what a find it turned out to be! The beach itself is a labor of love for a family who has lovingly restored it. They’ve added a boardwalk so you can walk the 2 kilometers without burning your feet on the hot sand.
There are lots of chairs and umbrellas, palapas and even some larger shaded areas for large families. There is a dive shop, a restaurant and facilities. Lots of great parking too. The strange thing is, we saw way more scuba divers than snorkelers.
BUT the snorkeling was amazing! AMAZING. Yesterday I mentioned how we had run out of new fish to see – well was I wrong!! This site provided us with some stunning fish to see, and lots we had never seen before. The highlight was seeing another octopus, but there were several rainbow flounder, and some fish we can not identify, since we forgot our fish book at home! Smart huh? We saw a couple of morays, and one kind of moray eel we had not seen before.
The entrance to the water is fairly good, some minor rocky bits, but we both got in quite easily. Right away, we saw these amazing silver fish, quite large, 12-20 inches long, with long dorsal fins. They schooled in groups of 8-15 and swam with us for a long time! Quite cute actually…
One thing that has surprised us, is that the Sergeant Major is not as prevalent as it was in Aruba and the Caymans. We’ve seen them, but in nowhere near the quantity we’ve come to expect, and the Dusky Sergeant Major is far more common than the yellow/black banded one.
For dinner we went to The Wine Cellar. We chose that particular restaurant because they provide a free shuttle from our condo! Pretty scientific huh? Well, it was quite simply fantastic. The Wine Cellar is a French restaurant, owned by a Dutch couple who have been on the island for 39 years. The restaurant is indoors, and very cozy with wonderful art on the walls. Service, food, ambiance – all impeccable.
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A couple of movies — first, here is a picture of the octopus. Do you see him? They can blend in very very easily, and sometimes the only way to notice them, is if they move.
Well, I dove down to take a picture of the black fish above, we thought was a grouper (turns out it is called a coney). I thought I’d spied something, so went back up to get my bearings then went down again. Well, when I came around a piece of coral, I startled an octopus and he flashed his warning color.
I’ve added two movies here – the first is the “discovery” video, and the second is a short 15 second piece of him getting agitated.
I thought I had an amazing movie of him flashing color, then moving across the ocean floor, while a blue peacock flounder moved beside him – but guess I forgot to turn the camera on! LOL Same thing happened with the moray – had a great movie of him moving across the ocean, then raising his head to me and opening and closing his mouth to flash his teeth at me. Sigh – ah well – guess we’ll have to find another moray to get a movie of!
Another short movie of the octopus.
The domed shapes are called reef balls, and are used to help coral reefs recover. Fish love ’em! When the coral covers the domes, they kind of just fade away. They are made of a material that will eventually just disappear, and leave the coral that has encrusted them to start a new reef.
While reading and having our morning coffee we were joined on the sunporch by the local cat. I think he preferred to sleep on our chairs because we used e-readers, while the people next door were making all sorts of noise by turning their pages. Disturbed his sleep don’t you know?
We decided to just swim out front of our place today and we saw some fun things. Pam got a bit of a sunburn, something she very rarely does. So we got her a rash guard and now she’s a convert.
We managed to get a couple of cool shots of a purple mouth moray that I thought deserved two different looks. He was a busy little guy, darting across the sand and along the coral like he had somewhere to go.
We took a nice drive around the island and I saw what I thought was a pretty darn cool house. Not your typical Caribbean home, that’s for sure.
Does this bird look like he’s about to jump in the pool? And he’s glancing nervously around to see if security will see that he is not a registered guest and toss him out. Thought it was a pretty fun shot!
