My Punta Sur excursion

We spent today at Faro Celarain ecological park. (It's also known as Punta Sur since it's at the southernmost point of the island.) The park is huge and is dedicated to the conservation of the five different ecosystems located within the park. Iguanas cross the road here, just like squirrels do at home; we had to brake for more than one iguana!

Much of the park consists of saltwater lagoons where crocodiles live. They've built a small walk-out area with a tower where you can view some of the crocodiles, if they happen to be around. We got to see three.
The park also has a lighthouse and we climbed to the top of it for some gorgeous views.
In this photo (taken from the lighthouse) you can see the ocean on the right and one of the saltwater lagoons on the left.
After climbing the lighthouse, we drove to La Playa Mas Hermosa (The Most Beautiful Beach), which is also inside the park. Dave laid in a hammock for a couple hours. I snorkeled. This particular beach has a reef that can be reached from the shore, but it's quite a long swim to get there--300-400 meters--over the length of a football field! I knew Dave wouldn't swim to the reef, so I was hoping to find some folks to swim with me. That didn't work out, but I decided to just go by myself. That probably wasn't the best decision I've ever made in my life... but I survived.

Let me try to give you a visual for just how far out I swam. (Click on the photo to enlarge.) In the photo below there are three floating rafts; the first one is just to the left of the group of people and the other two are to the left of it. The third one is so far out that it's hard to see--it's just at the edge of the dark part. Anyway, behind that third raft, the water is light colored again. It's a sand bar where you can rest your tired legs. (Did I mention that this entire swim is against the fairly strong current and waves?) The line of dark beyond the sand bar is where the reef starts. The reef goes to the right in this photo all the way to...
...the white buoy in this photo. Look in the furthest dark area above the lady's head in the photo.
I had one heck of a time swimming out there. First of all, the waves were pretty strong and made me disoriented. At one point I looked back to shore to discover that I had been swimming parallel to the beach, rather than swimming away from the from beach. Argh! (Dave later said that he saw me from the hammock and wondered how long it would take me to realize I was swimming the wrong way. It took several minutes.) I got turned around many more times, but eventually made it out to to the sand bar.

I anxiously proceeded to the reef... or I tried to. I'm not 100% sure what happened, but I think I actually swam over the reef (as in, yep, I totally missed it) and continued swimming... and swimming... looking for the reef. Heaven only knows just how far out I was when I finally gave up and decided to just swim back to shore. On the way back, I found the reef! By then my legs felt like jello, but I could allow the current to drift me along the reef. Stopping to actually look at anything required quite a bit of kicking against the current, so I didn't do much of that. The reef was really close to the surface--only three feet down in some places--so it was easy to see most things.

During mating season, sea turtles lay eggs on some of the beaches of the park. Many people see sea turtles while they're snorkeling, which seemed worthy of risking my life for by swimming so far from the shore. Alas, I didn't see a single turtle. I was quite disappointed. Other folks who came back after me said that they saw turtles and sting rays. Grrr. Here are a few things that I did see:
I finally got to the buoy at the end of the reef and I took a photo of it to prove that I was there...
... But I still needed to swim back to shore--another football field! I had to swim diagonally (away from my starting point) in order to avoid the brunt of the current. I was sooo tired when I finally made it to shore. But the excursion didn't stop there. I still had to walk back to my starting point where Dave was waiting for me. Here's another photo to continue this dramatic story. The tall straw-roofed building in about the middle of this photo was where I started... and where I needed to walk back to.
There's a man named William who owns a kayak and charges people $10 to paddle them out to the reef and then back to shore after they snorkel the reef. I initially thought that was a rip-off, but trust me, the next time I return to Punta Sur, William will get $10 from me!