I woke up before Daniela and made our reservations for lunch at the Sol Caribe Centro which is a sister hotel to the Campo we were staying in. Obviously the Centro is downtown. I also made reservations for Dinner at the Laredo which is a barbeque restaurant. We wanted the Italian restaurant but it was not open that evening so we were stuck with barbeque not that it would be a bad thing. After making the reservations I ate breakfast then attempted to book our tour for the afternoon. A swim with the manta rays. While I was trying to handle that Daniela came into the lobby and we finished out getting that sorted and then she had breakfast while I watched. I had another cup of coffee anyway. During breakfast there was an announcement by the international courts on the status of the island of San Andres. Apparently the ownership has been in contention between Colombia and Nicaragua both claiming it should belong to them. Currently Colombia owns it. The judgement awarded the island to Colombia but a lot of the ocean around the island now is in the hands of Nicaragua. It looked odd but I guess it was a sort of compromise. Daniela said that the bad of it is that Nicaragua will open it up for drilling where Colombia wanted to keep it a natural preserve for the ocean.
After breakfast Daniela had arranged a tour of the grounds by the site management as she is a travel agency. The tour would give her more information to give potential customers. So we spent about 45 minutes seeing what the Sol Caribe Campo has to offer. The tour took about 45 minutes or so and the manager could only speak Spanish so I just tagged along to see without really hearing much about it. When the tour was over we took a taxi downtown and had lunch at the Sol Caribe Centro. This was at that location's main buffet restaurant. It was much nicer than the buffet restaurant at the Campo. I am not sure why we needed reservations because no one checked. We just got in found a table and got our food and ate. I tried a beef stew that was pretty good. Since my stomach had been somewhat acting up I was staying away from foods that weren't cooked. I did that through the rest of the trip.
After lunch we walked a bit down the street and Daniela did some shopping for her mother and then it was over to our tour. The tour was a boat ride that took us first into the Manglar which I guess the everglades is the closest approximation I can think of. It is salt water surrounded by forest. After the Manglar we were brought back out to sea and came a reef location where we got into the water with life vests tied to us like floaties and snorkeled to see the reef. This was my first ever attempt at snorkeling. It took a bit of getting used to but once I figured it out it was rather cool. I did suffer a bit of salt water up the nose but it could have been much worse. We got to see a bunch of tropical fish and the guides pulled up some urchins and stuff like that. After the deeper section we were brought to where the rays are. I am not sure if they are really manta rays but they are definitely rays.This location of water is very shallow and we could be out of the boat without having to have on life preservers. We brought the snorkels and masks to be able to see underwater. I was actually fairly close to swimming here. I am not a strong swimmer, but with the snorkel I didn't so much have to worry about breathing (what I don't know about swimming).The guides caught ray and everyone on the boat got to hold it. We also saw tons of others as well as fish in the water. The ray had a very soft and sort of velvety feeling to it. They caught a fairly big one. After everyone held it we all just hopped and swam around for a long time until they said it was time to go. From there they just basically headed back in and we disembarked. The most amazing thing about the tour is the guides were three kids that couldn't have been older that 23 at the highest (and I am sure that was only one of them). They did a great job and honestly we saw a lot of other tours doing the exact same things and it looked very easily like we got the best one. The boat was nice and clean. They served beer and water and they were knowledgeable and organized.
After the tour we got ice creams. Me a mokka coffee and Daniela a mixture of caramel and pina colada ice creams. After we finished eating them we also shopped for a USB drive for the pictures for Daniela. By the time we were done with that it was time to go tot the Barracuda park to get on a shuttle bus to the Campo. That ride took maybe 20 minutes and we had time to shower and get ready for our dinner reservations at 8:30pm. We were probably a few minutes late at the Laredo but they weren't concerned. Our table was ready. So we sat down. Daniela did the salad bar and I waited for the wine which we got and then the food order. She had a grilled chicken and I had grilled beef. It was very tasty if a touch overcooked for me. Still it wasn't burned so it was not so bad. It was accompanied by rice and potatoes and there was really a lot of food so I didn't end up finishing.
After dinner we headed out of the restaurant (we were last to leave). We went back to the room and I changed because I was a touch dressed up to what everyone else was wearing and then we headed back down for dancing. Yes, I danced though of course not well and all of it at Daniela's teaching. She is a very good dancer. We did it off to the side rather than on the main floor. We stayed at the dancing bar until they closed that location an by then we were done for the night then headed back to the room and called it a night.
Today's pictures are located here.
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