Friday July 12th
They sent a taxi for me at 7:15 this morning. Turns out Omar’s boat was at the same beach I have been swimming at, a ten minute walk.
We were 5, including 4 young women from Belgium. Then we got two more at the last minute, a young Mexican couple. With Omar and his assistant Stanley we were good to go with 9 people on board the 8 meter fiberglass boat with a 75hp Yamaha outboard.
Omar gave a little speech as we headed out, told us we would go out about 10 miles. I expected that meant straight out. which is out of sight of land, which happens about 3 miles out. We never got more then about 2 miles (my guess) or so offshore, rather we went about ten miles west following the coastline before we turned around.
It was a very cloudy morning, as it has been several days this past month. That kept it very cool on the water, maybe mid-seventies air temp. Surprisingly when I put my hand over the side the water felt even warmer then it has felt at beachside. Crazy.
After about 45 minutes of slow cruising and everyone scanning the waters for dolphin sign, (which is them jumping clear of the water or just breaking the surface with their arched backs), we saw some off the starboard bow. Spotted dolphins, one pod at first, and a possible 2nd one a bit later, though Omar was not sure if they were not the same one. The video attached to this will show what we saw. They came over and checked us out, spent some time playing out in front of the boat, then went back to fishing after about 10 minutes.
We never got in the water with them, but we could hear them talking from the boat, which you can also hear on the video. Omar did not have hyrdophones with him, so we did not get to hear it them that way either. After it was evident they had moved on Omar put the bow around and headed back, trolling slowly. He was looking for turtle. He spotted a pair before long, they were mating. We spent some minutes observing them (which felt kind of intrusive to me) and he explained that they usually couple like that for 3-4 hours. We didn’t stick around.
As we continued trolling suddenly Stanley dove overboard without warning. When he came up he had a male turtle roughly 30 inches in diameter. He handed him up to Omar, who held him on the stern starboard seat of the boat so that everyone could have their picture taken. During this he asked if any of the young women wanted to swim with the turtle. They all hesitated so after about 30 seconds I shouted si! and took off my shirt and jumped in. That got the ball rolling and then Senor and two of the Belgium ladies came in as well. Photo ops all round.
All that remained was to make our way back when shortly after we said hasta luega to mr. turtle it began to rain.