July 27th - Various activities

The group spent time in two different ways today. Each had fun in their own right.

Jerid, Krystal, Brady and Megan went to the beach in the neighborhood that they found the day before and the girls got their first taste of snorkeling. They saw a starfish and a few fish. They were out for about 2 hours and came home to clean up. They intended to go to Wal-Mart to get a few essentials, but ended up stopping for lunch at a Mexican restaurant in town, and then going straight to the town of La Parguera. Following the GPS system, they found a small one lane road leading into town. They saw some horses in the road, who had escaped their fenced fields. At Parguera, they rented a boat and snorkeled some more in the mangroves.

Cliff and Erin decided to join her father and his visiting friends for some local flavor, heading up into the hills for a pig roast. They also tried boiled bananas (tasted like beans) and a dish called pasteles, which was another boiled banana but this time stuffed with meat. Rice and beans were served on the side.

In the evening, everyone joined up together again and made a spaghetti dinner (Jerid without sauce, and Cliff ate leftover cheeseburgers). We all headed out to La Parguera again, but this time to see the Phosphorescent Bay. Since we arrived early to ensure decent parking, we headed to the dock area, where there was loud music, tons of people, and a lot of vendors. Jerid, Erin and Cliff bought Piraguas (we know them as snow cones), Krystal and Megan got Pina coladas without rum, and Brady got a Pincho de tiburon, or a shark kabob. Brady claims it tastes like pork, Cliff tasted fish, as did Megan. But they ate shark!

The Phosphorescent Bay was quite a spectacle. The boat operator was quite strict in making sure no one had any lights on while we were in the bay, as the micro organisms that we would be seeing were sensitive to light. A worker for the boat company jumped into the water and swam between the two boats. His hands and feet (basically what was moving) glowed blue. This is how the organisms react to disturbances. We splashed our hands in the water and watched as little sparks of light lit up around them. We took a scenic ride back into town and headed home for the night.

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