Snorkeling and other forms of underwater exploration are definitely a large part of the CAOS program, but they are by no means the only things we do. Observe:
One of our programs involves a wide variety of challenge activities to keep kids entertained and to tire them out as quickly as humanly possible. The activity pictured here is a challenge to see how many tennis balls you can stack on your person. Let's just say you're reading the blog of the current record holder in both the sitting (172 balls - we ran out after that) and standing (74 balls) divisions.
This photo was taken about 25 feet off the ground, near the top of the CAOS rock climbing wall. The blurry stuff in the background is part of the Winchester-Swann driveway with a small portion of the hotel in the distance.
From time to time (this morning, for example) I go on the twice-daily pontoon boat trips to visit the stingrays. As the onboard naturalist, I dispense all sorts of information on the rays, as well as the reefs at our snorkeling site and starfish at our get-out-and-walk-around site. For those of you worried about stingrays after that unfortunate Steve Irwin incident (by the way, in my six months and hundreds of pontoon trips, I have yet to meet a group that does not bring it up), this should assuage some of your fears:
Considering that the vast majority of the stingrays with whom we interact are females, as well as the fact that most people on these trips are adults, my habit of kissing the rays I catch is typically met with all sorts of jokes. I'm sure you can think of some on your own. Honestly though, many of these rays really do enjoy being kissed on the tip of their "noses" because they have many highly sensitive sensory organs there, used to sniff out prey items buried in the sand. Some rays enjoy kissing so much that they will lift their noses and practically demand that you make out with them while you're trying to talk to your group about the fact that stingrays are normally shy, solitary creatures. Hussies.
This shot was taken by Raab when he was here in February (my watch says Sunday, February 5th at 4:15pm if you really need to know). It's a pretty cool shot of me holding the stingray, but it also gives you a glimpse at the ray's underside, with its mouth and gills.
So on today's trip, we headed over to the reef for our second stop to do some snorkeling. We usually give the guests free reign at this point of the trip, letting them explore the reef on their own. I stay in the area with them, but I'm not doing a guided tour of the Highlights of the Reef. So I found myself watching the blenny I always manage to find in one of the corals there, just floating in place with the top of my head at the surface and my bare feet hanging down. Suddenly I feel a little poke on the bottom of my foot. I thought I had accidentally hit coral or something (a cardinal sin), but I didn't see any nearby when I had a look. Still, I started slowly floating away from my blenny buddy... and felt another poke on my toe. I looked down to find a bluehead wrasse following my feet. Bluehead wrasses are cigar-shaped fish, about 5 inches long, with - you guessed it - blue heads. They are also cleaner fish, and will eat parasites and dead scales off of any other fish that comes looking for their services. Apparently I had floated into a cleaning station and they decided my feet were in dire need of a tune-up. I stuck around for a few more minutes, taking advantage of the free pedicure, before they found the ticklish spots on the bottoms of my feet and I swam back to the boat to tell the rest of the group about my new favorite spa.
