My First Day Snorkeling by Sam

First I am sorry that we don't have any pictures from this AWESOME day we had yesterday. We had the camera all right, but it turns out we left the battery back home charging!! I am really sad we didn't get pictures but without the camera I had hands free to snorkel and explore. The pictures I posted on here are ones I found online.

San Juanillo, Costa Rica

When we arrived at San Juanillo (the snorkeling beach), I was very excited to do my first snorkeling trip. We were a little cramped in the car which was not meant for 8 passengers, so we all piled out quickly. The beach itself was in a small cove separated from another beach cove with land shaped like a whale's tail. The land was covered with trees, bushes and vines in the middle and rocks and tide pools surrounding the edge. There was a big rock in between the trees and the tide pools on which people were climbing and looking out to the ocean with their binoculars. San Juanillo is a small fishing village so there were mostly local people there (more than gringos).

This is the closest picture I could find looking like what we saw.

I was really excited but a bit more nervous when I went out to snorkel. At first, I only did the goggles and went out on a body board, just sticking my face in the water to see the fish. It seemed a little scary to be in the ocean where I couldn't touch and then I started getting used to it. It was so nice to know that Patti was right beside me. I spotted tiny bright blue fish that were darting in and out of the rocks. I also saw an angel fish that looked almost translucent with black bands around its body.

On my second trip, I went out with Dad without the body board and I tried the snorkel. It worked really great and didn't take long to get used to. It clips on to the mask and I had to keep one hand holding it to keep it above the waves with the other hand paddling. We saw some big beige fish. They were harder to spot and were about as long as my foot. One of the highlights of the trip was seeing a bigger version of the bright blue fish only this time it had a round yellow spot right above its fin.

Sea Cucumber

At the end when we were tide pooling we saw lots of interesting creatures, especially under the rocks when we lifted them. We found a large dead octopus that looked a very large fried egg with tentacles. Patti spotted a brittle star that had very thin arms but a huge body and as soon as she saw it it scuttled under a rock. We also saw many teeny, tiny hermit crabs and some larger ones but only about the size of your big toe. We saw greyish greenish chitons with their armored shells. There were a dozen or more brown, squishy sea cucumbers that looked like they were peeing.

 We did all of this but didn't even explore the other bay. Our plan for tomorrow is to go to Ostional to do the turtle patroling and then go straight to San Juanillo to do more exploring!!!