Our favorite beach so far.

 

Yesterday morning Kai really wanted to bury himself like one of our visitors did the day before. Tia went out to help him and then helpfully videoed him while he couldn't do anything about it. Kai hates this video. Oh well. I'm the MOM.

 Afterwards we got our stuff together (and our good walking shoes --I did tell her, but she didn't hear apparently) and took a walk to La Flor. This is the turtle reserve that I ran to the other day. As a side note, my workout plan? In the trash. It's so hot here even at 6 am I'm just miserable running. The pool is so short that lap swimming isn't any fun either. I did 30 minutes the other day and it was torture. I'm hoping I'm staying active enough without formal workouts, but eh. It's vacation. I'll work hard when I get home right? Yesterday I got lots of walking in!

It was pretty hot, but we knew we were swimming when we got there so weren't too worried.

There were some cool information boards. Did you know in the fall, hundreds of turtles come to this beach to lay eggs over about a 7 day period? Makes me wish we had come in the fall. Still, as you saw, turtles come up in this area now one or two at a time and we're grateful for that.

You might also see that there are four kinds of turtles that come to these beaches including the endangered leatherback. I think the turtle we saw was a hawksbill.

 These are bags of sand. They dig up the eggs and put them in these bags to grow and hatch in a safer environment. I guess they missed a nest when I was up here the other day.

We asked our guide guy just in case if it was ok to go swimming before we went down. He hesitated.  Nuts. I knew right away we shouldn't have asked. 8.00 a person entrance fee he announced. Yeah. We didn't bring any money of course, and told him so when he asked "how much DO you have". He relented and said we could go look for 15 minutes. Bunch of locals fishing there. Pretty sure they didn't pay any "entrance fee". On the non-snarky side, there were like 6 guys living on the reserve to guard the beach at night, and I'm sure they could have used the funds for living expenses. We were cashless though, so started walking back.

 Midway between La Flor and our beach is this little gate saying "Brasilito" - or Little Brazil. We walked about a  1/4 mile down the path, in spite of a pretty aggressive sounding dog (he scampered when we bent to pick up rocks),

and came out in a manicured mini subdivision.

There were maybe 8 single family houses is all, and they had a lovely beach to themselves (and us!). We knew it wasn't actually private property, but it's off the beaten path for tourists which was nice. Our complex is kind of full at the moment.

 Brasilito is a sheltered cove with really clear, calm water. We all got out our masks and started snorkeling.

 Except Ari. She said she had a blister and refused to go in. Once that girl gets something in her head there is no budging her!

We all had a good time though. We saw some pretty fish, and one enormous spotted ray -- 2 1/2 -3 feet across. It had spots like this little one Jeff filmed below, but the spots weren't blue so I don't think it was a spotted eagle ray. It was too big for a yellow spotted ray. Anybody know?

 

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