Whale shark day!!! We've been looking forward to this for quite some time and I'll just say that we weren't disappointed:
Here's the deal: You take a boat about an hour out to sea (so you can no longer see land) and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there's a congregation of boats drifting and slowly motoring around an area about the size of a football field. As you pull up, you think there's nothing in the water and then all of a sudden, you see this gigantic rounded fin and about ten feet in front of that is a disturbance on the surface of the water, which is the whale shark's mouth hitting the surface as it engulfs clouds of plankton. It's a strange sight until you see it a few times, then you realize that they're everywhere around you. I think we probably saw around 15 - 20 whale sharks throughout the course of the morning. The guide asks you to zip up your wetsuit, get your snorkel on and sit on the side of the boat while the captain circles around to put you in proper position for jumping in. Let me tell you that during the 30 seconds or so that he's circling around, your heart is pounding out of your chest, your mind is racing and you're on the edge of freaking out a bit- at least I was. I don't remember being that nervous for anything in a very long time. And then you jump. Into an abyss of green murky water. And you hope at that moment that you haven't made a big life mistake. And out of the bubbles comes a gigantic mouth straight at you and you know everything is ok.
Your guide tells you before you jump in that you have to "swim, swim really hard, as soon as you jump in" and he's not kidding. You find out quickly that whale sharks don't really like to hang out with snorkelers (and I don't blame them), but that means they make a sharp turn to swim away from you and if you want to see them, you have to keep up. I almost puked trying to swim fast enough to keep up the first time. And the shark isn't trying to swim quickly. In fact, it's just chilling, sweeping up plankton, but they are HUGE, so just chilling is actually quick in our terms. A lot of time is spent near the tail:
So you gas out your arms and legs after a few minutes and then it's time to scare the crap out of the next pair of snorkelers . Each pair got two chances in the water, so we caught our breath and prepared for the next encounter. I was only slightly less terrified the second time. That snorkel was unbelievable because while we had a little time with a second whale shark, he left us in the dust and we were bobbing out in open water waiting for the boat to come back around, but our guide pointed out another shark nearby. We swam over and realized we weren't kicking for our lives to keep up with this guy (or gal, I don't know). This was a super chill whale shark and it didn't try to get away. We swam comfortably next to it for several minutes. At one point it turned toward me a bit while I was near it's mouth, which was an unnerving experience because, well, holy shit, it's a whale shark and where am I going to get out of it's way? It's mouth? I hoped not. Luckily it stopped turning so I didn't have to make a life-saving decision. I felt at that point that maybe I had used up all my luck for the year and backed off.
What an experience. I'll never forget it, ever. I highly recommend it for anyone who needs a good workout, scare and slice of humble pie.
We must have had a pinch of luck left because Andrew was very sad to be missing the Mexico/Netherlands World Cup game, but the boat just happened to stop at this bar on the way back to the mainland that was showing it! We got to see a little of the first half (good times!) and the entirety of the second half (not as good times).
When we got back to the hotel we figured we needed more sun (who doesn't need more sun when they're already burnt on their first day of vacation?). We charged down to the beach and played in the waves. Well, Andrew played. I got tossed a bit and almost lost my sunglasses. I sat on the sand after that.
Ready for snacks, we headed back to El Fritanga for octopus/shrimp and fish tacos. So yummy!
From there we relaxed and then headed to dinner at La Habichuela and had some yummy seafood and skirt steak. We were also serenaded by a two-man mariachi band. It was great:
Can't wait for more exploring tomorrow!
