Sal; Saturday, 18 March, 2023

What I hadn’t realised the previous day, given I was up before 6am because of the generator, was that the store cupboard and work room for all the cleaners for the block I was in was next to my room, and consequently at 7am I was woken up to the sound of all the cleaners carts being filled with water and rolled out onto the pavement outside.

After doing the hotel rounds picking up the other guests we headed up to shark beach and, after a quick briefing and donning water shoes, to avoid the sea urchin spines, we headed out into the reef and paddled out to about knee high water.

Here the juvenile lemon sharks swim into the reef and come up to swim between the legs of the tourists. Whilst an adult shark can grow to several meters long, these baby sharks were all a meter or less and clearly the humans were much more of a threat to them then they were to us.

The tour guide is a trained biologist so they were able to explain a lot about the life cycle of the sharks and they role that they play in the eco system. They also pointed out that more people are killed each year by cows than by sharks, with the bulk of the fear of sharks being able to be attributed to Steven Spielberg and the Jaws films.

We spent about 40 minutes in the water with the sharks before it was time to head back to shore and take the shuttle back to our hotels.

We were back in time for a quick spot of lunch before I headed down to the beach and went for a quick dip in the sea. The golden sand beach and azure sea were very appealing, though it was obvious that going out more than a few meters into the sea is a bad idea here as the waves crash very close to the shore and had quite a strong drawback. I spent a little while swimming in the sea before heading back towards the hotel, via a quick stop at the beach bar.

Back at the hotel I had a quick extra dip in the pool, which was certainly warmer, safer and a lot less salty than the sea.

After showering I grabbed a quick snack in the restaurant before heading out of the hotel and wandering along the beach the mile or so into Santa Maria to have a look around the town before heading back to the hotel, making it back just as the sun was setting.

Then it was into the standard evening routine of dinner in the restaurant, followed by a drink in the bar and then an earlyish night, ready to be woken up by the cleaners at 7am.