Wednesday in Provo

This morning we arose bright and early for our 8:15am departure on the Reef Peepers glass bottom boat and snorkeling tour. We met the boat at the Turtle Cove Marina and motored over to another resort to pick up a few more guests. On the way, we were treated to a sighting of JoJo, the island's famous resident dolphin, and his wife, SoSo. Our captain stopped the boat so we could watch as the dolphins surfaced around us and swam under the boat. For the rest of the day, Charlotte would stand at the front of the boat, point at the water and shout "Dolphin, mommy! Dolphin!" And let's just go ahead and say that Charlotte has definitely inherited the boating gene - she loved standing at the front of the boat as we sped along, hanging onto the rail and having the wind blow her hair back. No fear there, just a beautiful smile.

After the dolphin sighting and picking up the additional passengers (which we did by beaching the boat on the shore!), we headed to Little Water Cay to see the "famous" Turks and Caicos rock iguanas in their protected habitat. We learned how to tell the female iguanas from the male ones (the males have spikes on their backs; the females do not) and what these iguanas eat and how they get along together. The kids loved it. I was instructed to take lots of pictures of the lizards, so please forgive me if there are too many iguana pictures in our vacation slide show.

The next leg of our tour took us out to a reef for some snorkeling. James was not interested at all in getting into the water, but Madeleine wanted to give it a try. The water was about 12 feet deep and the waves were actually fairly big - it was a little intimidating even for me (who has been snorkeling before). She got scared the first time she went out - we had her in a life vest and I think it was too uncomfortable and kept tipping her in the wrong direction. But after a short break, she decided to try again. I am SO proud of her!! This time we tried it without the life vest. That did not go so well either (I got quite a workout trying to hold her up as she struggled with her snorkel), but we changed out her mask and snorkel and got her a pool noodle to put under her arms for buoyancy and that worked great! We floated along looking at the coral reef and all of the colorful fish swimming amidst the coral. She LOVED it. Her eyes light up every time she talks about it. I'm so glad that she did not give up when her first attempt failed - what an important life lesson for her!

Next we motored a bit to another area to go diving for conch. These are the snail-like creatures that live in the shells pictured here. They are an island delicacy and almost every restaurant serves them on their menu in a variety of ways: conch salad (raw conch), conch fritters, conch chowder, etc. I decided to skip the diving since I was so tired from helping Madeleine snorkel and my ears really hurt now when I go diving. Brannon, however, gave it a go and was the only one on the boat to catch a live conch. He also brought up the larger shell in the picture, which was empty. Apparently the conch can move quite quickly and are very tricky to catch. We beached the boat on an uninhabited island and watched as our captain showed us how to get the conch out of the shell, pointed out the anatomy of the animal, and then cleaned it and let us try it raw, if we wanted (Brannon, Madeleine and I were the only brave ones in our family). The guides had brought along enough conch to make a salad in case we didn't catch enough on our own, so we played on the beach while they cleaned the rest of the conch and made a salad with raw conch, onions, red bell peppers, orange juice, and lime juice. It was delicious!! William joined us in trying the salad but Shirley (who does not eat fish) and James stuck to just the chips.

After our snack in the beach, we headed back to Providenciales and had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the marina (they served chicken for Shirley and William, but we had the fish - both fried and grilled - and it was excellent). While we waited on our food, Brannon took James to go look at the boats. They found a very large motor yacht that was flying a Texas flag, so after our meal was over I had James show me the "Texas boat." The wife and daughter were out sun bathing when we passed by, so I struck up a conversation - they were from Austin but keep their boat in Palm Springs, FL. They hired a captain to bring the boat down to Providenciales so they could fly down to meet it. The husband and son love to fish and have had great success over the past few days. I got the name of the guide they've used with good success - I am still trying to convince Brannon to take me fishing. Apparently the tuna (yellow fin and bigeye), marlin, and shark fishing is great right now. I took the kids and showed them the deep sea fishing boats with the outriggers and fighting chairs and tried to explain what all the equipment was for. Maybe if I can find Brannon a boat to sail, he'll take me deep sea fishing. I'll let you know how that goes.

William and Shirley wanted to do a little souvenir shopping while we were in town, so we spent the afternoon at the shops at the Salt Mills. James ended up with a baseball cap with sharks on it, Madeleine got a snow globe with fish in it and Charlotte fell asleep in the stroller.

We returned to the villa for a little down time, followed by a light dinner and finally some much needed rest. I have no idea what we have planned for tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure it will involve sun, sand, and bright blue waters.