Since there was some wind that day, we were a little alarmed our plans may not work out, but Ditleff Point promised good wind shelter on its western, lee side for swimming in Rendezvous Bay. All during the week a bulldozer had been making a brand new road, and he was back at work. But we were able to walk right on past. We peeked over the Fish Bay side and looked back toward Fish Bone, a little topaz colored bleb on the hillside. We could also see into Reef Bay.
Ditleff Beach is rocky, but leads down into grassy shallows of Rendezvous Bay. We'd barely gotten wet when we spied a sea turtle, but we was a little shy, or he wanted to play tag and didn't realize we couldn't swim as fast as he. We saw some squid right after this, but their picture didn't turn out.
If you look closely, you can see the school of fish which is quite well camouflaged against the coral.
Joan caught a picture of us just beneath the surface.
It's a bright blue fish. That's about all I can tell you.
This is probably looking through 10 or twelve feet of water. It is near the center, upper-left quadrant, and and red markings around his fins and a striped back. Another is just below him and you can really only identify a yellow mark near its tail. Parrotfish chip algae off dead coral with their beaks, and in the process chip the coral into beach sand.
Galen and Melissa do some diving for the camera. I was probably 8 - 10 feet down in each.
This, we think after trying to look him up, is a porcupine fish. They can swallow water and puff up, but we didn't scare this one enough to get a show. In the first picture, which Galen cropped, enlarged, and despeckled with Gimp, it's out from under the reef and swimming and is in the upper-left quadrant near the center of the photo. On the right, it's run back under the reef because Galen was diving down to get this shot. The water here was very deep - maybe 25 feet. It's head was large - about 6 or seven inches across, and the fish was 2 or 2½ ft. long.
Galen swam down to try to take pictures of the underside of a reef overhang since lots of fish hide there.
Using your imagination, and you see see the east end of a west bound tuna. Joan spotted them first, and Galen came upon them a few minutes later to get this shot which was supposed to have them both.
I think this is a butterfly fish, but I don't know what his striped friend is.
We happened upon this starfish in shallow water on the way back. It was difficult to take a picture because the water was only barely deep enough to get below the surface. This, by the way, is the kind of grass the sea turtle was eating over at Leinster Bay.
That was the end of our guided snorkel. We trekked back to the Jeep, and Melissa blew out her flip flop as she passed the dozer, but fortunately she was able to put it back together, and it held until we got back to Fish Bone. We said our farewells and began packing up.
There are native lady finger orchids at Fish Bone.
The century plants are these huge succulents that grow for a hundred years and then bloom - once. After the blooms die, the islanders actually take the bloom stalk and make a Christmas tree from it. Joan and Al are worried about this bloom taking out the powerline.
Packed up, we returned the Jeep, mailed our postcards, and headed for the 1:15 ferry back to Charlotte Amalie (pronounced uh-MALL-yuh, not a-meel-yuh nor am-uh-lee).
These colorful buildings house fine jewelers, bars, and knick-knack shops and comprise the Wharfside area of Cruz Bay.
We can look back at from the other side at Asolare and dream of pork tenderloins. The gray haze is from ferry diesel exhaust, sorry.
In this photo you can see the deep sapphire indigo of the deep water.
St. Thomas, Charlotte Amelie. St. Thomas in general is well settled.
Believe it or not, there is a sea plane landing in this picture as a small blue and yellow to the right of the white house on the island. In the off season, that's apparently the only way to get from St. Thomas to St. Croix. Galen was impressed with the steep approach and short landing in a harbor filled with boats.
We arrived, got into a taxi-van, and 5 minutes of driving got us to the airport. After making it through customs, we got lunch and took off landing 3½ hours later in Atlanta. That's it until next trip.