Cindy Southgate's Travels

Friday, February 18

After our usual breakfast buffet, we went to the front desk to meet our guide for the snorkelling tour to Tortuga Island. We had a couple and their 5 year old daughter joining us. They were in the midst of travelling around the world for 6 months.

We all got in a van and drove to the marina. We transferred into a small speedboat and were off. I have some trouble with sea-sickness so I had a ginger gravol beforehand and also wore my seabands.

We had a very nice ride to the snorkel spot and saw a whale along with her baby and escort. This was our first time seeing a whale in Costa Rica. We also saw some Yellow-Crowned Night-Herons which we also see here in Ottawa.

We spent some time watching the whales and then headed toward the island. The scenery along the way was quite beautiful. On excursions like this I always enjoy the boat ride almost as much as the destination.

We passed through a large rock arch. Our captain called it Gringo’s rock because all the tourists want to go through it.

We finally reached our snorkelling destination. We were moored fairly close to the island along side a large rock formation.

The snorkelling wasn’t great. They were experiencing a red tide which means there is more algae in the water than normal. This affected the visibility. There were a few fish here but nothing amazing.

We headed over to the island where we would have some free time and be served lunch. We think our guide may not have had a perfect understanding of English because he kept saying we would eat in 20 minutes. We missed out on renting paddle boards because we didn’t think we had time. Instead we wandered the island. It was quite pretty but maybe not quite up to they hype I had read.

We had a nice lunch and then cooled off in the water. We didn’t see anyone else renting paddle boards or kayaks. It seemed most people just came here to sit and drink.

It was time to head back to our resort.

We saw many pelicans in the harbour.

Dinner was a bit unusual. I wasn’t super hungry so I ordered “French Onion Soup”. When it arrived there was a small piece of bread with a bit of cheese on a plate. And a bowl of onion broth with a few tiny pieces of onion. The broth was so salty I couldn’t eat it. I tried to explain to the servers that what they had given me was just broth, and not French onion soup but they didn’t understand. I even showed them pictures on my phone. They brought me some new broth with bigger pieces of onion but by now I was so tired I just gave up and headed back to our villa to sleep.

Mike and I both had some stomach issues in the evening. I’m pretty sure it was from the lunch that was served on the beach.