Iguanas & O’Brien’s Plane Wreck
I have begun to notice that this trip is starting to come to an end, so I have made a promise to myself to do everything in my power to see all the things. But that is quite hard because there is a lot of things I want to see!
On this particular day we started off the morning anchored at Black Point. We pulled up the anchor and started towards Iguana Beach on Bitter Guana Cay. We found a spot to anchor and we got and the dingy and headed towards the beach. We got out of the dingy and iguanas immediately started to come towards us. So were big, some were small, some were shy and others were NOT SHY AT ALL! We walked over to this massive rock on the beach and Ben and I climbed up the side of it. Once we got up, we told mom and dad to climb up. It was so high that you could see everything. We could see the boat, the beach, the iguanas. It was beautiful. On my way down, one of the iguanas jumped out of nowhere and it scared me! I ran the rest of the way back to the beach. We explored a little bit more. Down on the beach another group of people had come to see the igunanas. They were feeding them strawberries! (you are not supposed to feed them). I thought that was crazy because strawberries are SO expensive down here and SO tasty. I would never waste my strawberries!!!
We went back to Nanook and headed north for Cambridge Cay. We've been there before, but we haven't seen everything, and that includes the plane wreck. Dad said get on your wetsuit because we’re going to see the plane wreck. So of course I got my wetsuit, put it on and hopped in the dingy. A couple minutes later mom and dad got into the boat and so did Ben. We started the engine and started towards the supposed spot of the plane wreck. We looked and looked but we couldn’t find it. At one point we sort of gave up, but then we saw that another boat had a dive flag on their dingy so we went over and asked them “have you been to the plane wreck yet?” and they said “yes!”. We asked them where it was and they pointed to a black spot in the water. We zoomed over in our dingy and looked underwater. There it was! A flipped over, snapped in half Cessna! We all got into the water with our snorkels and went over to the plane a couple of times to get an idea of where it was. Dad got the dive gear out and Ben and dad went under the water and went all the way down to the plane which was around 25 feet down. You could see the engine and the prop and the wings, just not the tail. I don't know what happened to the tail of the plane. I really wonder what happened to the other end of the plane. Maybe it floated away or maybe they removed it? I don't know. But what I do know is that it was super cool!
After visiting the plane wreck we zoomed over to what is called the Aquarium. The Aquarium is a live reef right near O’Brien’s Cay which is in the Exuma Land and Sea Park. The Land and Sea Park is a national park so you aren’t allowed to fish or take anything like shells. The only thing you can take is memories and pictures! We hopped in the water with our snorkels and were greeted by SO MANY FISH!! There were definitely hundreds, probably thousands of fish. We saw tons of sergeant major, french grunts, small yellow tail snapper, a couple parrot fish, some angel fish, and many others. The coral is beautiful. The colors are so vibrant and it is so healthy. There are many species of coral here. There is elkhorn, staghorn, sea fans, sea sponges and some others which I didn’t know. I was swimming along and I think one of them thought my leg was food and nibbled me! It kind of felt funny and sort of hurt, so I got out of the water to check what it was. It was just a tiny scratch and I was fine so I jumped back into the water and continued swimming. A couple minutes later we all got out of the water amazed at what we had just seen.
Next, we went over to a little sand bar and got off the boat and grabbed the paddles that we keep in the dingy and used them to draw on the sand. We drew pirate flags and pirate snowmen and just plain old pirates! We took pictures of our drawings before they were washed away by the next incoming tide. We hopped back in the red dingy and cruised back to Nanook. On our way back we saw a huge eagle ray. We watched it underwater and it was amazing. They are so big. As we approached Nanook we saw one jump right in front of the dingy. It was SO cool!
We got back onto Nanook and tried to relax after our exciting day but a few minutes later a whole bunch of rays came swimming towards the boat. One was a spotted eagle ray! As we watched them swim away mom shouted “dolphin!!” We turned back around and saw a little fin poking out of the water. We watched and watched but he didn’t come near the boat.
After a while we went back inside and sat down. But then mom remembered that it was nearing low tide and we wanted to go see Rocky Dundas cave. We zoomed over in the dingy and found the spot but it was way too wavy and we decided it was unsafe so we went back to Nanook. The sun set, we took down the flag, mama made dinner and we all sat down and watched a movie.
I think we did a good job of covering everything we could that day!
