Wednesday dawned clear and warm – barely 90 degrees, so we put on our sweaters and headed to Mullet Bay. It is a large sweeping bay, on the south side of the island. It’s also near the main airport, on the Dutch side, one beach over from the famous Maho Beach. The water was warm and calm, with a beautiful soft sandy beach, about a mile long, in a long gentle curve.
We entered near the left side, and quickly found tons of fish, some we’d never seen before. It wasn’t long before we saw our first octopus. He was partially concealed under a rock, and stayed there, watching us warily as we dove to take pictures of him. We left him alone and quickly found another slightly larger octopus also partly concealed. We took a few pics of him. We found a third octopus hiding under a large rock. He’s probably the biggest one we’ve found on any Caribbean island. We struck out across the bay to the far right side and quickly ran into another octopus. That’s right! We saw octopus all over this bay! At least eight, maybe more, including one little tiny one about three inches long.
There were lots of fish I tried to get pictures of, but following my recent lucky string, I got El Zippo. Sorry folks, but I just suck with a camera. One of Olympus cameras has bitten the dust. It keeps saying close the cover, when it is! LOL Anyway, we’re down to the old repaired Olympus, and it doesn’t work completely. All the buttons except the on/of and the picture clicker don’t work.
We’re off to see Turtle Reef tomorrow (Thursday), so we’re hoping this sucker will last, AND that we come back with pics of turtles. I took 170 pictures at Mullet Bay and about 10 were reasonable.
We snorkeled a long time here at Mullet Bay, and just had a blast. We came out for a beer and a rest and plowed back in for another short dive. It was just as fun, seeing another couple of octopus. We saw this really cool fish, divided perfectly in half, one side silver, the other side black, but of course none of the pics I took turned out.
The sun was setting as we came home, and we passed Maho Beach. It is famous for being the closest you can legally get to jets while they are in the air! We managed to see one plane land. We’ve been saying we’re going to have to come to this beach during the day, but we’re quickly running out of time.
As we drove home in the dark, we saw lots of homes decked out in Christmas lights. Some are really quite swell and extravagant.
We had dinner at Beau Beau’s because they have a lobster medallions special, starting with a lobster bisque, and an ice cream dessert. You can skip this meal as it is passable, but hardly great.
I went to St. Martin hoping to swim with turtles, so mission accomplished, thanks to Aure, Sally and Octopus Diving. But the real highlight for me became the octopus sightings. Tim was especially adept at picking them up… I usually only found them by accident, diving to take a picture of another fish and seeing the octopus change color.
The first day at Mullet everywhere we went up and down the left side, there were octopus. Under rocks, clinging to the side of rocks, others “out in the open” moving along, altering his appearance as he goes. It was wild. I’d still be trying to take pictures of the first one, and Tim is calling us to the new one!
I think they are the coolest thing in the ocean to see move…Over white sand, he goes all pale, over the rocks, he takes on the coloration of the rock he his over.
