Yal Ku

Maddy was up with the birds this morning and took the camera with her for a walk on the beach.

Several people around here have told me that they have seen a one legged bird on the beach.   

Once I finally got my butt in gear I joined Maddy and Gerry for a second walk on the beach.    Maddy is looking at something....what is this?

By golly it is a pipefish, a cousin of the seahorse.  Maddy and Gerry insisted it was some kind of fish.   It was very small.  I thought it was seaweed until I uploaded the picture.    

Yal Ku is a ground level Cenote in Akumal.   The entrance fee is 150 pesos, they give you a wrist band and you can come and go until 5:00 p.m.      Helen, Rob, Shirley, Maddy and I headed over for a snorkel at 10:00 a.m.    The sea life was beautiful.    We saw barracuda, parrot fish, sergeant majors, blue tang, yellow tang, needle fish, and more.    It started to rain and we were all getting cold so we cut the snorkeling a bit short.   By the time we were out of the water, out of our snorkeling gear and in the car, the rain had stopped.

After snorkeling we stayed in Akumal for lunch, a bit of shopping and headed to Lucy's for homemade ice cream.   After we got back to Xpu Ha, Maddy and I decided to go back for another quick snorkel.   

 In the meantime, the winds had come up, causing a current that churned up the bottom of the cenote, the visibility had reduced to about 8 inches.    We snorkeled blind, against the current, out into a little inlet of ocean water where the water was clear.   There were no fish there, so we headed back again.   We didn't see much, but I'm pretty sure we worked off lunch and ice cream.   

We took off our snorkeling gear and took a little walk around the grounds.   It is beautiful.  They have several sculptures set back along pathways through gardens.   If you want to see more pictures of the sculptures, check out my facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151459513402464.538863.587442463&type=1&ref=notif&notif_t=like  

     

On the other side of the gardens the path comes out onto the cenote.   This little fellow looked up at us.   We realized that the current had not churned up the water all the way back here, so we grabbed our snorkels and jumped back in.   By that time, we only had 10 minutes before it closed.  

When we got back to Xpu Ha, Maddy took another walk along the beach.   Xpu Ha is 1 1/2 miles long, so a walk from one end to the other and back again is a 3 mile hike.   Maddy walked the beach 3 times today. I do believe she is already in training to walk the Camino de Santiago.