Rainbows and Dolphins:Snorkeling in Dominica

We finally used our snorkeling gear today.  It was a "dive boat" that accommodated snorkelers on a 4-hour tour (yes, we made the obvious references about it not being a 3-hour tour).  There were 3 divers, 4 snorkelers, and 4 crew. A wonderful morning!

As we were leaving the dock we noticed a double rainbow!  Admittedly we've seen rainbows nearly every day -- not so rare in the tropics in the rainy season when it's sunny and raining simultaneously, but double rainbows are far less common.  Like many others we've seen here this rainbow covered a good portion of the sky.  Perhaps an auspicious beginning to our expedition.

Our guidebook lists 2 "don't-miss" snorkeling locations, and we were fortunate to visit both.  The first was a bay at the southern tip of the island.  Indeed, the other side of the head at the south part of the bay is the "Atlantic Ocean" and not the Caribbean Sea --the former being quite rough and the latter quite smooth. As near as I could tell, the only "swimmers" were the 10 people from our boat (the captain stays on the boat).  We saw an impressive variety of fish -- a google search suggests we saw trumpetfish, banded butterflyfish, french grunt, queen angelfish, and many others -- blues, blacks, greys, greens, yellows and likely other colors. We saw several species of coral of various colors: purple, yellow, grey and probably others.We also saw sea urchins, anemones, sea fans, sea cucumber and other things.  Jeff had fun playing with the camera my parents recently gave us and we will post some underwater pictures / videos when we get home.

After the first snorkel/dive site we headed back north.  On the way we encountered a pod of maybe a dozen or so dolphins.  The captain spun the boat in a nautical version of doing cookies to engage the dolphins and we had the pleasure of watching them leap and twist and frolic (well, maybe not exactly frolic) for several minutes.  It was fun to spot them in the boat's wake waiting to leap. Jeff has some video we will post of this treat!

Then we got to the second site: Champagne Reef.  The fish, coral, and other animals were similar to the first site.  But this site had air vents reminiscent of the air that bubbles in a bottle of champagne.  The bubbles looked a bit like jellyfish, the air pockets warmed the water, and it was great fun playing with the bubbles!  In some places there were several vents close together and it was a very interesting sensation to let the bubbles break on our arms, legs and elsewhere.  And yes, Jeff got pictures and video of that, too.

 A wonderful morning indeed!