Barbados - Day Four

Today was the day I was most excited for – the turtle and shipwreck snorkeling day! It did not disappoint.

Luckily, we knew right where to go to meet our boat, as we accidentally went there yesterday on our way to Brandon’s. The company we went through is Cool Runnings, and our boat was the Cool Runnings III.

We sailed out (on a literal sailboat – I’ve never been on one before) at 9:30. We rode for a while with first class service in the form of all you can drink drinks. We kept it fruit juice, of course. We first stopped to swim with the turtles. That was incredible!! They were huge and would swim right up next to you. I had one run into me – kinda freaked me out until I saw what it was. There were probably around 5 big turtles swimming around us. There were also huge sting rays swimming at the bottom of the ocean. Also – lots of fun tropical fish, and some super large ones that I don’t know the name of.

We then stopped to snorkel over a WWII ship wreck. That was really cool as well. There were also tons and tons of tropical fish there as well. We swam for a long time. the only downside were all these things in the water that bit you – Becki said one of the guys who worked on the boat said they were sea lice. Whatever they were, there were tons of them and I got eaten alive and it hurt! So I looked up sea lice, and apparently they are the larvae of jellyfish. Makes sense.

After swimming in the wreck, we sailed a bit further and stopped at a nice beach area to have lunch. The food was great – traditional Bajan cooking, they said. Fish and chicken, rice, macaroni pie, etc.

We stopped there and just ate and swam and hung out before sailing back to shore.

The crew was hysterical. They were so fun and lively and good dancers. There was awesome Kalypso music going the whole time. The Captain was funny and kept calling me out – it was embarrassing.

We knew we wanted to visit Harrison's Cave. We knew somewhat where it was, and decided to stop by after the cruise to see if it was still open. It was an incredible drive - the East side of the island is very jungly. It smells divine and there are birds chirping all over the place. We made it there, and it was closed. while we were going back to the car, it started to drizzle. Mind you - we are still wet from being in the ocean all day. Also - our car has no doors or windows. Luckily we had the top on. It started to POUR. It was later at night - the sun was going down, we were wet, and it was pouring rain, and we're driving pretty fast so it's incredibly windy. It was a very cold drive home, but also a fun adventure. We got our towels out of the trunk and wraped them around ourselves, even though they were wet. It helped.