The Next Installment of Honeymoon Bliss

We wake at 6:30 am on the third day of our honeymoon for a lingering breakfast of coffee and pastries on the beach.  The SCUBA intro class is at 10:00 this morning, so we mosey over to the dive shop to check out our snorkel gear.  Since it is, ahem, the CRACK of dawn and we have a few hours to wait, we strap on flippers and mask and dip our toes into the warm morning water of Caneel Bay.   We enjoy a lazy morning snorkel (and, may I interject, what a ridiculous word that is: snorkel).  A large lumbering turtle snaps his sharp beak on a sprig of seaweed . . . a small sting ray wafts by . . . a school of pearl white fish hang suspended, one of them a transluscent, transcendant purple . . .  We float over purple sea cabbage, beige brain coral, large boulders tossed willy nilly in the sand, an ominous looking man-made stone well, completely submerged.  It’s overcast this morning, but the sea floor is clear and busy and unaware that above the water is grayer than yesterday, the air cooler.

At the appointed time we wrap up in enormous sand-colored towels and take our seats on the roof of the dive shop, where a brown-skinned Ichabod Crane of a man goes through a flip chart with us on “Discovering SCUBA.”  It lasts ten minutes, and I’m distracted the whole time by a glob of fruity goop that a bird has dropped on the instructor’s knee, and by a half dozen tiny lizards doing push-ups on the smooth-barked tree directly behind him.  We head to the beachside to get strapped into the various gear – weight belt, vest thing with oxygen tank attached, mask.  As we wait our turn a large iguana casually stalks through the beachside bar, trailing a pack of flashing cameras with tourists attached to them.  Freshly weighted down, a handful of us toddle to the water with the instructor and wade chest deep, then plug in our regulators and sink down.  Panic is a bird in my chest squawking at me to get up, get up, breathe air, while the bubbles that pour out of my mouth limit my vision and further freak me out.  I calm the shrieking bird and look at my SCUBA certified husband next to me, and the two young girls also in our group.  I grit my teeth, as best one can with a regulator in, and hold my ground, determined not to embarrass myself.  A few forced deep breaths later I feel ok, and we run through some exercises together.  Find the regulator.  Clear the regulator.  Clear the mask.  We do a lazy swim around the block, so to speak, and that’s our introductory lesson.  Immediately afterwards, we’re so busy debating over whether or not to do the afternoon dive with the instructor, I inadvertantly lock us out of the room.

Late morning we sit on the back porch, writing, reading, burning our complimentary Caneel-Bay mango candle on our porch table.  We have just a half hour before we can pick up our pre-ordered picnic lunch from the front desk, which we intend to enjoy at Honeymoon Beach, one cove we haven’t yet seen.  When we do get our lunches we are pleasantly surprised at the size of our meals: sandwiches, fruit salad, whole fruit as well, apple juices, chips, and a ziplock bag chock full of cookies is our lunch, eaten under a low shade tree on the sand of Honeymoon.  The beach is a short hike by road away – it’s a public beach, and as such there are no beach chairs or pina-colada toting waiters in sight, and there are lots more boats anchored just off shore.  After our hearty and fresh noon meal, it begins to rain, so we drag our towels and books under the shade of a shack back behind the treeline, and then slip into the water for a snorkel.  The Professor rescues the beach from decline by fishing a beer can up from the sea floor, and after depositing it in the trash, we dive happily back into the deeps, our good deed done.  Underwater, while the sea doesn’t exactly teem (due to heavier boat traffic?) there is plenty enough going on for us to explore while waiting out the rainstorm.  By early afternoon the tops of my feet and toes have been rubbed raw by my flippers, and the mask depressions in my face skin are starting to feel indelible (also our fingers are pruny), so we decide to pack it in and head to a quieter beach with less trash and more pina coladas.  We go to collect our things from the shelter where we’d deposited them, safe from the rain, and suddenly hear it start up again, heavy-sounding drops on the dried leaf litter.  Then we realize we aren’t getting wet at all and look a little closer at said leaf litter.  It isn’t raindrops but dozens of moving crabs making the rustling sound.  Acres of hoary, rough-looking crabs are scrabbling all around us through the forest floor.  They have thick studded sunburn-red claws and ugly black torn-up shells, and they are pretty darn big fellows, too.  I try to get a picture of one, but he keeps hiding from me.  The leaves crawling with little critters is mildly skeeving us out, so we shoulder our packs to go.  At the sound of something unseen but probably much bigger crashing through the undergrowth a few feet from us, we exchange mildly alarmed looks and then hot-foot it back to the road, and to the room.