We undertook our last real adventure on this day. Our whole group went down to the harbor at Quepos in the morning. We were going to go sailing and snorkeling. When we got there, the tour manager immediately offered everyone drugs: Dramamine. He encouraged anyone who thought they might feel the slightest bit of nausea to take one. He was a smart and experienced man.
There were about thirty tourists, including our group, on our catamaran. They immediately started offering drinks – both alcoholic and nonalcoholic. Once we got moving, people started dropping like flies. Tracy spent the entire 4+ hour trip lying down. Mere was not 100%, and Sonia was green as well. Despite being open to the air, it was pretty stuffy on the boat. I was okay, but I wasn’t exactly doing any flips either.
We stopped to jump in the ocean for a few minutes, which was a godsend. Despite being so close to the equator, the water was cool and refreshing, if not super clear. Our boat was headed toward one of the beaches off of Manuel Antonio to snorkel. Right before we arrived at our snorkeling spot, Zaida strongly warned us not to touch any of the fish. She said she’d tell us why later.
We jumped off the boat and moved toward a rock where the tropical fish congregated. This was my first snorkeling experience, and breathing through my mouth with my nose underwater was awkward. We got to a spot where the fish were, and they suddenly swarmed all around us, coming within inches of my face. I started thinking seriously about why we weren’t supposed to touch the fish. Would they bite us? Were they poisonous to the touch? Was I going to die if one brushed up against my arm?
We didn’t have much time to snorkel. There had been a sighting of a humpback whale farther out in the ocean. We shot straight out into the open ocean for at least forty-five minutes without seeing anything. When the boat would stop and I began to think we might not see anything, we’d see a spout a quarter mile out and start moving again. This happened more than a few times. Finally, we got close enough to actually see the whale – for about 3/5 of a second. Anthony did get a good shot with his sniper camera in sport mode.
We turned back toward the beach after seeing the whale, and the crew put up the sails for a while. They served us lunch – kebobs, pasta salad, and pineapples. We were eating marlin kebobs, they tasted like chicken. Quepos is a big town for deep-sea fishing. An hour after turning around, we were back on land. Not a moment too soon for Tracy.
The rest of the day was spent napping. Mere and I had been hit pretty hard by the Dramamine. We did eat together as a group at a place only a short walk from the hotel, but we both went back to the room early.
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