Last Day

August 9th, 2002 ~ Day 8

By this point in our honeymoon, we were really needing a vacation from our vacation, and were looking forward to going home. Accordingly, we slept until 2:30 in the afternoon to kill a good deal of the day.

We went snorkeling for quite a while, and we saw even more amazing things than we’d seen the past two times. We saw this weird frog/chicken/fish thing that on first glance just looked like some twisted up piece of gray, spotted driftwood on the ocean floor, but on closer inspection it appeared to have a pair of some kind of flipper feet on its ventral surface at the rear of its body. What we guessed to be its head tapered up from the rear of the body into a pointed snout, giving the whole animal a kind of triangular shape. On its back at the base of the triangle, near what I’d call its butt region, was a pair of circular openings that appeared to open and close at regular intervals, as if the animal were using them for respiration. I’d guess the whole thing was about 12 to 18 inches long. It remained perfectly still on the ocean floor until I agitated it by swishing at it with my snorkeling flippers, to which it would respond by lethargically pushing off the ocean floor with its little frog leg things and slowly settling down again only about a foot from its original location. There was another, more experienced snorkeler there with us, and he said he had never seen anything like it either. I’ve tried to figure out what it was by searching on the internet, but have so far been unsuccessful. I’d really like to know what it was.

We also saw a large, flat fish similar to a flounder or halibut, but its coloring was the same as that of the ocean floor, and its eyes were up on stalks, presumably so it could bury itself in the sand and still be able to see. We didn’t see it until we were right above it and it moved in an effort to get away from us. We followed it for awhile and watched as it would stop and try to hide as we approached. Then it would be off again, with us following close behind.

After snorkeling, we returned to our room for showers and to get ready for dinner at La Crapola. Surprisingly, the food was actually somewhat palatable, and we enjoyed a relatively bee-free dining experience. By the time we finished, the day was pretty much over, so we returned to our room to pack in anticipation of leaving for the airport early the next morning. We spent the rest of the evening watching The Godfather, Part II, and we requested a wake-up call for 6am.