Living off the Sea???

One of the lines the guys love to use while we're eating meat they've hunted at the deer camp is "living off the land!" Well on Wednesday, we were living off the sea.  We woke up that morning and were picked up on our hotel dock at 8:00 am by a local fisherman.  He took us to the reef right off the island for 4 hours of snorkeling and spearfishing.  We didn't use a big tour company so it was pretty neat to get to be alone.  We originally wanted to dive but decided it wasn't the best idea because of my cold.  Next time....  The reef was beautiful and we ended up with 3 lobster that Matt speared and about 5 conch.



When we got "home" we hopped in the golf cart again for another lobster burrito at our favorite restaurant because we were really hungry after our 4 hour swim.  Then we stopped at a grocery store to pick up ingredients to make some ceviche with our conch.

One thing I hadn't mentioned about this hotel is the service.  Bill is the owner and turns out he's from Denham Springs.  What a small world! He was a neat guy to talk to.  Roberto is the manager that is a local so he's the best source for any information about the town and very nice guy to talk to too.  Steve is the time share rep that had only been there about 5 weeks but goes out of his way to get what you need or find someone who can.  They just recently decided to start selling time shares but he didn't bug us about them at all.  So glad because we've had bad experiences with that.  There were only 2 rooms (out of 10) booked for 4 of the 5 nights (it's the low season) so we had very personal service.  Wednesday afternoon Steve found me an hour massage for $30 US right down the street from our hotel on the beach.  It was the best massage I've ever had and perfect afternoon after our long swim.

Hut where the massages were

We were very tired so decided to spend the night in.  Matt picked up "fast food" but one of my favorite things about this island is there is no "fast food" like we would think.  He picked up some fried chicken and shrimp fried rice from a little hut down the road.  Our hotel has an observation deck so we sat up there and had a couple of drinks until the sun went down before we ate.  Some amazing views of the town.

Thursday was again a beach day.  Tacos for breakfast and Matt sauteed the lobster from Wednesday's fishing trip in some butter and garlic along with some cabbage (the way the locals do it)  for lobster tacos.  We had picked up some homemade flour tortillas from a stand that morning too.

Plus the conch ceviche we shared with the staff and other hotel guests too.  Our ceviche is different than the way the locals are used to having it but they liked it! So thankful for to my husband for fishing and cooking on our vacation.  I surely didn't do that much work.  We both had a massage that afternoon (figured I might as well have 2 since they were half the price I'd expected, it is vacation!) and then showered and got dressed for our last night. 

We walked in to town to do some souvenir shopping and have dinner at a restaurant on the beach.  We shared some drinks and the seafood platter for 2 (and also asked for tortillas to make fajitas of course, noticing a theme of our meals?) and it was the perfect evening to end a perfect trip.