One of the highlights of the trip so far was our boat excursion out into the Caribbean. The 14 of us (plus our friendly driver) boarded a catamaran and started our trip along the beautiful coast. Luscious greenery, including palm and mangroves, continued up from the coastline and incredibly blue water to distant mountains. The captain stopped the boat at a sandbar a good distance from shore. With my snorkel gear all ready, I followed the rest as we swam from the back of the boat over numerous sea stars, sea urchins, and sand dollars that were scattered around the sandbar. I watched as one sea star made its way several feet across the sand. A big-eyed puffer fish remained still in the sea grass as we stared, hoping it would puff up for us.
After roaming around a bit there, we continued northwest towards the Samana Peninsula. We approached these huge cliffs, and a few of us through out the terrific idea to jump off of them. So we stopped there. No worries though, we stopped to snorkel – the only jumping was off the boat. The water was completely clear all the way to the bottom at least 40 feet below. It got shallower as we floated towards the rocky island, where numerous fish were tooling around. There were some brightly colored ones, and a school of at least one thousand of the tiniest of Silversides swam right below. We were careful to avoid the small jellyfish – only a few randomly lingered a couple feet below the surface, almost the perfect depth for us not to notice at all. We also saw an eel (ugh but cool).
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