Sea Turtle

An interesting bit of cultural relativism: Met a woman who told us that when her baby had a runny nose (babies can’t blow their noses; it’s very hard to get their noses clean), she would put her mouth over his nose and suck out the snot, then spit it out. “It’s my baby and I love him. What is the harm?” Then she told us that when a breastfeeding friend had pain from engorgement, her husband sucked out the milk to relieve the pain. She was careful to emphasize that he spit it out. What interested me was that she saw both acts as being on the same grossness par. I’d expect it would be rare to find an American woman who would be willing to suck out her baby’s snot; but it’s probably not uncommon for men to sample their nursing wives’ breast milk.

Amy, Miles and I went on “Underwater Adventure” — a “semi-submersible” which was really a large-scale glass-bottomed boat – deep hull with slanted glass sides and large central cushion. Very low visibility BUT finally saw a sea turtle in the wild – two in fact. Not huge – about 2.5 ft. long. Very fast. Only wish I had been in the water with it at the time.

At end of sight-seeing portion, the craft moored in 30 ft. for snorkeling. Amazingly only me and one other person — a soldier just back from Iraq — went down. This was by far the best dive of the trip, scuba trips included. Utterly fantastic coral formations, millions of fish in schools and singly. Infinite crevices just wide enough for human body. At bottom you could just pause in the stillness and stare into a hole – fish would come right up to your mask or inspect an outsretched finger, trained by the divers who feed them bread for sake of tourists inside the boat. Miles was able to watch me from inside. Felt so in my element. Holding breath for up to a minute. On emerging, one of the boat pilots asked “Are you a merman?”

Spent our last afternoon on sands of Doctor’s Cave beach – the cave unfortunately long since sealed. Played w Miles in sand and small waves. Amy discovered still more reefs 100 yds offshore, amazingly with a pretty good array of life for being so close in. And then another natural surprise – a 3 ft. moray eel on bottom in just 15 ft. of water, mouth open neck raised, ready for prey. Cautiously I reached out and touched its tail – it slithered under a rock – my first encounter with a moray.

Next morning, the grueling trip home – Mobay to Miami, four hour stopover, 5.5 hr flight to SFO, BART home.