Snorkeling adventure on Friday

On Friday it was time to snorkel again, this time as part of an official tour. We signed up for a half day adventure, which ended up being with 2 other couples. One of the guys was an NHL player for Columbus, Antoine Vermette. I just looked him up, and he is apparently pretty good, as he's an assistant captain and was 41st in the league in points. Nice. We actually saw them some more as they were on the same flight as us out a few days later.
As for the snorkeling itself, it was great. Our first stop was out in the deep water trying to see a manta ray. They are apparently huge. I say apparently because it was too murky to see them. Murky is a relative term - we could only see about 30 meters down, and needed to see about 50m to see them on the bottom. So pretty darn clear water. Mike was first in the water, and the boat guide through him a chunk of bread. He was immediately surrounded by a bunch of colorful fish trying to eat the bread, or his hand, whichever they got to first.
We didn't get to see the sting ray and moved on to the next area. Now this is cool, we got to see about 8-10 spotted eagle rays wandering about on the floor. We had to keep quiet and not make too much noise in the water, as they would flutter away super fast. It was spectacular to see them swimming and so close. Another terrific thing to have seem.

Towards the end of the tour, we moved on to another area, which was a giant coral near the outer reef. We started venturing out by ourselves, since the water was only a few feet deep. Mike was first out of the boat and swimming, and after a few minutes of seeing a bunch of different fish, he pointed out an octopus. It was hiding in the coral, and so we called our guide over to see if he could get it out and show it to us. Apparently the day before he had taken one and thrown it at somebody and they got inked. He came over and started poking it with his snorkel. Unfortunately, the hole turned out to be a big cave under the coral so the octopus just went away and we didn't get to see it anymore.
That was pretty much the end of snorkeling. We saw a bunch of different fish but didn't get to take any pictures since the underwater camera broke. After that we just came back to the pool again and spent the afternoon in one of the cabanas reading and sleeping.

For the evening, we booked a private sunset cruise for 2. Mike and I enjoyed some canapes to start with, followed by a sushi plate, and then ended with dessert. Of course, when looking at the sunset, you must drink the bubbly, so that is what we did. The sunset was amazing and we lucked out since the past few days, the sunset was blocked by the clouds.