Panama - day 4

On Friday morning we woke up early (again!) to go snorkeling. The temperature of the water fluctuates a lot throughout the year, and it turns out that there's a cold current in March so it was freezing. We all had wet suits but I was still shivering the whole time.

This was my first time snorkeling (besides a failed attempt in Mexico) and I was pretty nervous but it was fun. The visibility wasn't great, but we saw a few fish and a couple stingrays. I had a really hard time relaxing and didn't last long. No pictures though.

We came back in and had breakfast at the hotel. Every morning was the same but it always tasted so good: a plate of fresh fruit, orange juice, eggs, ham, and meunster cheese.

Eric invited the boys to go spearfishing with him again, but this time they decided to hire a boat to drop them off at a nearby island for a few hours. Malorie and I decided to come so we could enjoy our own private island.

Our private island! It was tiny, this is about the whole thing.

The boys were fishing near these rocks. We could see their buoys and tried to keep an eye on them.

You can see Contadora just across the water.

It was nice to sit in the sun and read all afternoon. After a few hours, Dan came out of the water hauling these:

Malorie and I were both pretty excited about it...and then we saw the whole haul:

I couldn't believe they had caught that many fish! There were a few local boys hanging out on the island and they came over to hear the stories:

The boys and their catch:

And Malorie and me. This guy was heavy:

Our boat driver was a half an hour late and I was starting to think he was going to leave us there all night. But he finally showed up and we loaded everything up and drove back to the main island. We drew a little crowd when we unloaded all the fish on the beach.

It was pretty hilarious. The Survivor crew (people on the right) were especially impressed. They even bought a fish to cook up for dinner. Some of the locals bought fish, we sold some to our b&b owner, and we saved one to cook up for dinner. (Side note: all the Survivor crew were Turkish which made no sense, until we got home from our trip and found out that it wasn't American Survivor being filmed, it was Turkish Survivor. It was a little bit of a disappointment.)

Good job, boys:

That night we met Eric at a hotel on the other side of the island and the chef cooked up our fish for us with a side of vegetables, french fries, and fried yucca. It was so good. I'm not sure what the fish was called, I think a yellow jack? It's the yellow striped one in the center of the photo above. The restaurant wouldn't buy it so we weren't sure if it would be good, but I think it was my favorite one of the trip.

We stayed out late eating and talking and then headed back to our hotel for bed.