We went for some walks down the beach to explore.
The shoreline is packed with dead coral and seashells.
Many of them are bleached conch shells.
There are also snails.
With funky shells.
There are tons of conch.
The local fishermen cut open the shells to get the gooey slug like things out.
The shells are spirally inside.
There are lots of these weird things. Most of them are in the water.
The lizards are pretty colours.
We spent the last two weeks in Antigua doing nothing.
The beach in front of the hotel was very secluded and mostly private.
The snorkelling was OK but we were too lazy to even go SCUBA diving.
The hotel was quite small so there were not many people to intrude on our private beach.
Matt ate the local specialty, conch curry.
We did make some friends on our little beach.
This is Gregory.
He lives under the shelter and mostly eats dropped picnic scraps so he never really comes out into the light.
This is Livingston.
He is a very brave adventurer.
Except when we startle him. Then he tries to hide in the sand.
This is Sandy. She is sand coloured.
This is Brock. He is big and shy.
This is Rocky.
He is ready for a fight.
Quite the little tough guy.
There were lots of pelicans in Antigua
They had bright red necks.
We’re pretty sure this is a little blue heron.
But he’s not very blue.
He would be very funny looking if he was more blue.
He’s just not adequately funny looking in black.
Now he is very black.
And pretty funny looking. But it would be better in blue.
We may not have been adventurous in Antigua but there was a reef just outside the guesthouse and we managed to find a couple things.
This was a sneaky puffer fish. I didn’t see him until swimming right overtop of him as he was rested on the sandy floor.
Most of the area that I explored looked like this.
There were lots of interesting looking sea grasses growing in the shallow waters before the reef. To get to the reef you had to walk over it which I didn’t really want to do.
Partly because these urchins were all over the place and I didn’t want to bump into any of them.
This was a tiny rock on the beachside of the reef and I went here several times to visit the residents.
There was only one lonely butterfly fish. I’m not sure why he decided to hang around with all these other fish. Maybe he go confused by the colours and though he was one of them.
The one fish that I made sure to keep an eye on was this guy. Didn’t want to get stabbed by him.
This guy must have swam over the reef as I saw a couple others on the other side but only one here.
Most of the time I would find these fish by getting too close and having them dart away extremely fast.
The bottom looked quite neat as I swam over top. It was quite shallow and in most places I could reach down and touch the grasses from the surface.
Had to pay attention to the current and where I was drifting to make sure I didn’t get stuck.
I did my best to get some cool pictures of the lionfish because they are really beautiful fish, tasty buggers too.
The reason why everyone was hanging out could be due to these guys.
I’m not sure if they are a type of cleaner shrimp but maybe.
I think this was a display of “go away this is my rock and stop bothering me”.
Instead I continued to hang around and get more pictures of shrimp and got to see a couple of different urchins hanging out too.
But one last picture first.
