Boat tour of Maya Bay

hey :)

Today Jason and I took a longtail boat (http://photoblog.philipandsiowyen.com/images/20070729200326_dsc_5592b_small.jpg) to Maya Bay. We ended up having two other Canadians on the boat with us (the second and third we have met on this trip...last night I met my first other Canadian who was from Quebec); one was from Ottawa and the other from Newfoundland. It's nice to spend time with people from home every once in a while to remind us of things back home.

The tour was awesome. We left our beach to go to Monkey Beach, where we saw a lot of monkey being fed by other tourists (we just took pictures). Oddly enough, the beach is pretty well-known, even though it's tiny. From the monkeys we went to Maya Bay and swam around for a while. The bay is jaw dropping beautiful. We went snorkelling not too long after that; I have only ever been snorkelling once, and that was in Hawaii where all I saw was the same fish over and over again. The snorkelling here is incredible; it feels as though you're in a massive aquarium at the zoo, with tons and tons of different fish. The water is so clear you can see for a long time in front of you. The second snorkelling trip was better, with even more fish to see. The last trip wasn't the best because the water was shallow, with lots of rocks and sea urchins (I didn't want to get too close to those guys...ouch!). Throughout the tour we are surrounded by enormous cliffs that rise up out of the water and provide us with an incredible source of pictures. We went out to the open water after to watch the sun set. it was beautiful! I wasn't feeling super comfortable on the way to where we watched the sun set because the waves were huge and really rocked the boat! I don't think it helped too much that I swallowed a bunch of salt water while snorkelling...:( Although we spent the day outside, I surprisingly don't seem to have gotten a sunburn.

So, I hope this finds you well!