Dean &
Ginny's excellent adventures... Main
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Antigua--09/08:
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We drove out to Devil's Bridge not knowing what to
expect. On the way we saw these smirking donkeys and this unique
outdoor bar...
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<< We parked the
car near the outdoor bar and walked across this causeway thinking that
this must be the Devil's Bridge, but it wasn't.
The plants are under great strain out here on this
exposed point. It's on the northeastern side of the island.
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This is THE Devil's Bridge... It's about
30 feet long with waves crashing under it. We were not
tempted to walk across it.
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We'd hauled our dive gear on this trip thinking
that we'd dive several times during the week. We found a
dive operation that we liked in Falmouth Harbor and went out the day before the
tropical depression hit the area. The visibility was great
and we saw some interesting sights.
The dive boat was small and there were only four
divers including the dive master and a dive instructor out
for a fun dive. We are used to larger boats where you step
off the stern into the water. On this boat we had to flip
over backwards from the side of the boat.
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Above, the dive master, Brian. Below, a
squid speeds past us--we'd never seen one in a dive before.
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 Near
the surface there were oodles of jellyfish of various sizes from 2 to 14 inches
in diameter. After
surfacing, the four of us wondered what a group of jellies would be called--I
offered, "a jam of jellyfish."
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There were a lot of nice sponges at around 30' down--the one
below right is about 4' long. Since there is so much tropical weather
here, Brian said that much of shallower reefs are beat up and the soft-bodied
sponges can't survive.
 
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Yellow-tailed snappers form a large school.
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Atlantic spade fish.
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We used the anchor line as a guide to the surface
and were greeted with this scary image as we surfaced...
We did not dive again, but we did get to use some
of our gear again to snorkel.
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After the storm went by, we decided to do some snorkeling off of
the resort. There are two reefs--we swam along the inside
reefs, which are about 300 yards offshore, on three separate days. 
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There were many conch shells.
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We saw a number of hand-made fish traps and saw
people tending these traps with small boats. We were
surprised to see this large (5-feet across) staghorn coral in such
shallow water considering the rough tropical weather here.
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This ray was about 2 feet across, but we
didn't get a photo of the large 5-foot sting ray that we'd seen in
the shallows on another day. >>
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And a close-up of the new, live growth on the ends of the staghorn
coral.
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We really enjoyed the snorkeling and the bonus
was that we didn't need to drive anywhere.
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Behind Dean's shoulder is the desalination
plant for the resort. While it's a luxury facility, they
use energy-saving bulbs and take great care to make this a green
operation. We had a great time and all in all this was a
very nice adventure. |
<< We
loved the steel drum band that performed on the deck at Coco's
Restaurant. Their rendition of Hotel California was amazing.
Entertainment was provided several
times during the week, but we liked this group the best.
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