The turtles are real!

This weekend Terri was not on call at the hospital, so we decided to go snorkeling at the new beach I had discovered this week--Tinian beach. Terri and I have become hooked on snorkeling...it is easy, facinating, and relaxing.

Tinian beach is a lovely, isolated location that only the locals know about. Once in the water, the beach runs out quickly and turns to rock or coral. Also, the water is very shallow--two to three feet deep--so there is wading, but no swimming.

As Terri and I began our snorkeling, we were surprised at how far out the shallow water extended! We just kept swimming straight out from the beach, floating about two feet off the rocky bottom, looking at the fish and coral. Finally, after swimming several blocks away from shore, we came to a sudden, sheer cliff!

Even though we were 'floating' on the surface of the ocean, and safe from falling into the depths, it was quite a frightening moment when we moved from a depth of two or three feet to about 50' deep! It was difficult to determine how deep it really was, as the water is so clear that one's depth perception is thrown off completely.

As we moved into deep water, our antennae suddenly went up...are there sharks out here? We never had to worry about that at the other beach sites, as there is a reef and breakwater that would prevent any large fish from coming into shore. But this area was open to the ocean, and, of course, we had just watched an interview on TV about a man who had his leg bit off by a shark!

We simply stayed close to the cliff edge as we swam along, feeling safer knowing shallow water was close by. It was during our adventure into deep water that we discovered the sea turtles. Terri spotted them first, and I was slow to pick up on them (even though she was excitedly pointing them out to me) due to the fact that I am half blind without my glasses, and the turtles are quite camoflaged by the ocean background. Finally, one of the turtles began to swim away, and crossed into an area of white sand--making it quite visible, even to me!

The turtle was smaller than I thought it would be--all of the TV shows we had seen about sea turtles made them look so big! Of course, it was quite a ways away, so we probably couldn't tell how big it actually was. Terri saw two turtles, I just saw the one that swam away.

After following the cliff edge for quite a ways (which meant we we not only far out from the beach, but a long ways down the coast), we swam towards shore, and back along the beach. As we swam, again two or three feet above the rock shelf, we saw many different kinds of coral--blue, pink, green, red, etc.

The beach was completely deserted, except for Terri and I, as we laid out to catch some rays, letting the small waves wash around us. Finally, as a small group of islanders came to have a barbeque, we were ready to leave. We discovered that the group was some of Terri's nurses from the hospital! We chatted for a while (they offered us food, but we had already eaten the rest of last night's pizza), then left for home.

We had taken the scooter to the beach--it must be quite a sight, watching two 'haoles' (that's gringo in Chamorro) ride up the road on a scooter built for one small asian! But it got us there, and the only problem we had was getting back up the hill from the beach. I was a gentleman and let Terri ride to the top, while I walked. Once on flatter ground, we both got back on the bike and made it home.

PS: So now that I know how to embed video from You-Tube, here is video of the beautiful sea turtles we saw on our snorkeling excursion.