Night Snorkelling!

I went snorkelling last night!  

With a company called Best Excursions Cozumel.  Our guides were Adolfo and Memo.  Both super professional, kind, patient, and dedicated to giving us the best experience possible.  There were just 2 clients, me and Rosamaria.  One underwater guide, Adolfo, and one guide in a kayak, Memo. 

We each had a sea scooter with a powerful flashlight attached, a mask, snorkel, and fins. We were in the water for about 1 hour.  

My only real worry was about being cold.  Which I was, pretty much from the start.  But it was worth it!

We saw lots of neat things.  The most notable were 

• 
  Many yellow stingrays - easy to spot because their eyes reflected our lights a lot. It was so cool to watch them swim!!  because their bodies are so supple and kinda just ripple over the sea bottom and I was close enough to really see details of their bodies!
• 
  Many puffer fish - easy to identify because of their distinctive box like shape, and so cute mostly because I know they puff up into a big silly looking spiny ball that floats when they're scared.  Happily, none of them felt threatened by us.  They all kept their normal shape :)
• 
  One barracuda - sounds impressive but I wouldn't have know what it was if Adolfo hadn't said
• A couple of impressive schools of fish
• A scorpion fish, which is toxic
• A lobster- really neat to see it!
• AND!  
• About 3 squid - sooo cool the way they're kinda translucent and change colours - we saw kinda bluish/ purple ones with green eyes!
• One wonderful octopus!!  We saw it twice.  The first time, it was totally smooshed onto some coral.  I never would've spotted it.  Adolfo did! He approached it to show us, and to see if it would move.  It did not. I was a bit disappointed.  But I was glad, and respected Adolfo for not harassing it to move for our benefit.  When we swam past that coral again, on our way back to our entry point, the octopus was still there.  This time, moving around so we could see it much better.  So cool!!!!

Thank you Adolfo and Memo!  For a really cool fun experience!

Pictures (all courtesy of google since I did not have a camera with me)

1) A puffed up puffer fish.  So silly and sad looking.

2) The octopus I saw was not these amazing colours.  It was more brown and orange.  The head was about 6 inches long, the legs were about 12 inches long.  It was very cool!!!!

3) The squid I saw were translucent like this one with green eyes.  About 8 inches ling.  Awesome!!!

4) I saw about 12 yellow stingrays in all.  The smallest, a baby, was about 4 inches wide and 8 inches long tip to tip, the biggest was about 12 inches wide and 24 inches long.  

5) Our sea scooters were blue.  But this is how we held them.  They had 2 switches, one for each hand.  You had to press both switches to make them work.  They had neutral buoyancy and were pretty easy to use.