When Pigs Swim...

What is that saying people always say? “Where pigs swim you will never want to leave?”  “When pigs swim you are in paradise?”  Well I can’t remember how it goes but I will tell you we LOVE where the pigs swim.  After setting the anchor we ate some lunch then hopped in the dingy and took the leftovers to the beach.  The pigs hear your motor and meet you halfway to see what you brought them.  Snouts to the sky they meet your boat and ask for some lunch.  We had apple cores and rotten cabbage. Mmmmmmmmm they squeal, snort, and swim.  Yes I said swim.  As the big mammas were enjoying their lunch we went up to the beach to feed the babies, but as soon as one mamma saw how close we were it came running and they are FAST.  We all made it back to the boat with all our fingers, giggling the entire time about how hilarious it is to see such an odd sight.  Swimming pigs, who would have thought?  The main reason we loved this place so much was Thunderball Grotto.  To say this place was fun in an understatement.  I think we could have gone here everyday for a week.  As you pull up in the dingy all you see is a cute small rocky island.  You put your fins, masks, and snorkels on and dive in the water.  Already fish are everywhere.  Big grouper, small angelfish, colorful turbot, pretty much every tropical fish.  You swim under a ledge and pop up at the end of a spectacular cavernous cathedral.  The ceiling is 30 feet high with skylights flushing in light.  It truly is a sight to see.  The water of course is crystal clear and there is a slight current pulling you through, so you don’t even have to swim.  You could float through the whole thing.  There are underwater tunnels to swim through that take you back outside.  The light funnels through theses as well.  As I look around I am thinking this is amazing and beautiful, how long did it take to form?  As Preston and Dan look around they are thinking, hmmmm I wonder how high I could rock climb that wall, or hmmm I wonder if we could jump through the skylights?  So that is exactly what we did.  We climbed up the backside to the top, played rock, paper, scissors to see who went first and took the plunge!  Okay now I grew up jumping off cliffs at Lake Powell and 30 feet, well it’s not that big of a deal.  Now jumping 30 feet into a sharp, jagged limestone hole about 2 ½ feet in diameter and all you see is pitch black below you is a totally different story.  It is as creepy and as fun as it gets!  By the next day the boys were taking those millionaire neighbors of ours to the top and jumping through the hole.  They were also rock climbing the inside up to small caves and hiding in them then jumping out into the grotto.  I didn’t think this anchorage could get any better until the next day when we went lobster hunting again.  On the charts it showed some coral between some small islands that we took the dingy to.  Now we had been using the camera under water so much it had been fogging up, so I said, “No don’t take the camera it needs to dry out.”  Dumbest thing I ever said.  We snorkeled the in the best water I have ever seen.  Huge yellow elkhorm coral, purple seafans the size of a refrigerator, a brain coral as big as a geo-metro, sea turtles, barracuda, and of course the clearest water yet!  All taken with mental pictures and nothing to show all of you.  Sorry…….next time I won’t leave the camera behind.