12/17/2024 was entirely a free day – there were no group activities scheduled at all (although we did sit with others in the group if we happened to run into them when we ate meals).

I made it a goal to take a great sunrise picture, so I woke early only to find that the clouds were too dense to see the sun at all. One hour after sunrise, this was the best that I could do:

It was in the 90s outside, but our hotel room was cool so I mostly worked inside and went through my pictures (and created my first blog entry about our vacation). This was admittedly very lame, but I have few regrets.

I had the option of going snorkeling, but I didn’t want to get overly sunburned, so I opted for a one hour massage instead.

When the tide went out, I saw that we could walk out to the haystacks, so Amie and I decided to go check it out.

As soon as we hit the beach, we were confronted by the “beach boys” who offered to give me a tour and to show me great things, including a moray eel. I figured that seeing an eel would be kind of cool, so I agreed to let them show me around. Amie wasn’t interested, so she went on her own.

They found a couple of moray eels that they were able to entice out of their holes by attaching a small crab to a stick.

They then found some puffer fish (which we briefly held out of the water for pictures, but they were kept wet and were never in danger).

They then found a small octopus, which they said was pretty rare.

I also saw the regular things that you’d expect to find in a really good tide pool:

I tipped them well (because I would have never found the eel or the octopus without their help) and they were very pleased.

Later, I heard that the “beach boys” caused a lot of divorces, so maybe it’s a good thing that Amie didn’t come with me. 🙂

Amie spent most of the day on the balcony reading, and that afternoon she declared that she now understood why people love to fly to nice places so they can read on the beach.

That afternoon we also realized that we were running short on cash (we paid with credit cards for most things, but all tips are always paid using cash), so we had to find an ATM. The hotel arranged for a short tuk tuk ride to the bank, which was kind of fun.