Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Key West - Day 3

So, the next morning we get up and have a quick breakfast at the hotel restaurant because we are supposed to be down at the dock by 9AM. As you can imagine, we weren't moving too fast!! The weather was kind of crappy so we were keeping an eye on the weather channel while we were down there. Finally we headed on our way to the dock and we got a phone call from the people we had booked the trip with. We had booked the 1/2 day trip but as it turned out, we were the only ones on it. The guy offered to upgrade us for free to see if the weather would clear up and put us on the all day trip leaving at 10. Ummmmm - OK!!

We walked around in the rain for a while and then headed to the dock around 10. There were 3 other couples there and we were all willing to go ahead and go out in the rain because chances were it was going to clear up pretty soon. Off we went on a sailboat that included snorkeling, lunch and kayaking. Oh yeah, and more wine!! Just what I needed, right?

Here is Wayne doing some sailing (sort of). We didn't really get to sail much because there wasn't much wind. The weather cleared up after we had been on the water for about 30 minutes so we were good to go!



Unfortunately, we could not find our underwater casing for our camera so we didn't get to take any underwater pictures while we were snorkeling this time. However, another couple that we met on the ship said that they would send us copies of theirs so if I get them at a later date I'll show them to you. We saw a lot of very cool fish down there.

Once we got out to go kayaking we saw a bunch of nurse sharks and bonnet head sharks. Here is one of the nurse sharks although you really can't see it too well.



This is a jellyfish called a Cassiopeia.


This is a part of the mangrove forest.


From the boat we saw dolphins, a few sea turtles (they were way too fast for me to get a picture of unfortunately) and LOTS of jelly fish. At one point while we were snorkeling I was just swimming around looking at the coral reef that we were swimming over. All of the sudden I looked up and there was a pretty good size jelly fish RIGHT in front of my face!!! That taught me a really quick lesson about watching where I was swimming.

Luckily, the crew was smart enough to not start serving us alcohol until after we finished snorkeling (always a good plan) but after that - they were more than generous with the beer and wine. I probably drank another freaking bottle of wine that day!!! It was a really great cruise though - we went with Danger. The guides were great and we went out to the Key West Nature Preserve to go snorkeling at the coral reef around Man Key and kayaking around Woman Key.

Later that night we joined one of the couples that we met on the boat for dinner at Sloppy Joe's. This is Cindy and Harry - a SUPER nice couple from Michigan.

2 comments:

Darcys Knotty Knitter said...

Sounds like an awesome trip and I always love the pictures you take:) Hugs Darcy

judith said...

Love it! If you get a chance, go on a sunset cruise on the Liberty Clipper, or maybe the Fury. My daughter worked on both those boats. I sailed on them in 2005.