Yesterday Barb and Chuck took us snorkeling at one of their favorite spots, “The Fan Garden”. It is located at the southern end of the bay, near the shore. Fortunately for us, they picked us up in their fast dinghy. It would have taken us forever to get there in Kosmopolitan.

We hopped in the water with our snazzy new camera that is waterproof to 30 feet and it immediately went dead. It had filled with water. Sigh. This camera is touted as being totally indestructible and we were sure it would survive us. We must have some kind of bad camera killing karma from a past life haunting us. We swam from south to north, and each took turns pulling the dinghy along with us as we swam.

We are so sad about losing the camera right then, because the site was lovely and we would have liked to get some photos. Barb and Chuck said it was better prior to Hurricane Omar. There isn’t a lot of coral here. Small spots of hard coral dot the entire area, but very few coral formations are much bigger than a ball. There was one quite large one, though. Towards the north end of the site we did see a few soft coral formations, some of them fairly decent in size, but only a few. Near the soft coral, we also saw a couple anemones, but again no clown fish. But, as the name of the site implies, there were hundreds of sea fans all along the site. All were green or a greenish brown, with no purple ones. Some looked a little tattered around the edges, but most looked healthy and vibrant. They ranged in size from small to absolutely gigantic. It was really neat to see.

There were also quite a few fish. There were more fish than in Guadeloupe, but like Guadeloupe, they were mostly small guys since the bigger ones tend to get fished out. We saw a few trumpetfish, in both yellow and white. We saw some parrotfish, including the red stoplight variety. We saw lane snapper, as well as some other varieties of snapper or grunt that we couldn’t identify. The snapper (and possibly grunt) were in smaller than normal schools. There were a few varieties of surgeonfish, as well. There was an assortment of damselfish, including the bi-color damselfish. We also managed to identify a new species of damsel fish to us, called the yellowtail damsel. It has a light brown body with a vibrant yellow tail.

We also saw some jewel fish, a lot of goatfish, a lot of smaller wrasse, a cute little trunkfish, a sand diver, a grouper, a couple rabbit or squirrelfish, and a few blue tang. The blue tang are eye catching.

When we came to the end of the site, we hopped in the dinghy and headed back to our respective boats. Christi spent an hour working on the bottom. Our paint is definitely done. There are barnacles growing on the paint these days, which has never happened before with this round of bottom paint. Normally the barnacles are only on the metal. The grass is totally out of control. We seriously need a lawnmower these days.

In the evening we had Chuck and Barb over for dinner. We had a nice visit with them.

This morning we went to the weekly produce market. An intersection near the waterfront in the heart of town was lined with trucks, and people were selling produce out of the beds of the trucks or on tables set up on the sidewalk near their truck. There were a few people selling assorted non-produce goods, but the vast majority of the vendors were selling perishable foods. Most of the products on offer were tomatoes, carrots, roots of some sort, fresh ginger, cabbage, christophene, oranges, grapefruit and eggs. There was a bread vendor, as well.

We made a right turn and walked the ½ block to the water, looking at all the food choices. The road dead ended at a covered patio filled with more vendors, except in here they were selling exclusively from tables.

After the market, we went looking for a Rastafarian restaurant that had been recommended to us. We know very little about the Rastafarian culture and wanted to learn more, starting with the food. We are under the impression that they are generally vegetarians (don’t eat meat) and maybe even vegans (don’t eat or use any kind of animal products). We have seen a lot of Rastafarians around the island, and noticed in the guidebook that there are an unusually large percentage of vegan and vegetarian restaurants on Dominica compared to most other places (except India). Sadly, we never found it. Instead, we settled on a restaurant so small they could barely cram three tables into it. We forget the name of the restaurant, but the name implied an ocean view. This is the view nowadays:

How unlucky for them that they had a ship sink right in front of their restaurant! We had egg sandwiches, which were pretty basic but absolutely delicious. We’re not sure what the secret was that made them better than normal.

Then we headed back to Kosmos to get her ready to go to sea. Tomorrow we are planning to leave early in the morning, but we hadn’t decided where we were going. We spent a lot of time reading up on the various islands before deciding to skip Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines to go straight to Bonaire. Why? Several reasons. One, we are tired of being on the move all the time. Rather than spend a few days each at several islands, we’d rather spend a couple weeks at one island, and we think we’ll like Bonaire the best of the bunch. Two, the short passages kill us and we’d just as soon do a longer passage. Three, the wind and waves will be coming from directly behind us, so more favorable sea conditions (and less overall miles) than if we were to stop at the other islands. Fourth, we stay far, far away from Venezuela, which has had some reports of pirate attacks recently. Once that was decided, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening reading the news. There is a lot going on back in the USA. Of course, we didn’t do any chores or cleaning, as intended.