5/9/23

I woke up thankful that my sun screen did it’s proper job yesterday. I asked Sarah if I looked like I got a little color. She said no. She could have lied…but it’s ok. Honesty is the best policy.

 Sarah and I sat outside this morning having our coffee. We were listening to the birds and watching them land on the pond. It’s so cool to watch them prepare for landing and effortlessly glide along the smooth surface of the water.

 I was thinking about our day with the manatees and said to Sarah “ I wonder if the wet suit is stretchy?” As I was thinking about my butt to waist ratio. “I freaking hope so.” As she was also thinking about her butt to waist ratio. We laughed at the thought of struggling we may go through later in the day.

The excitement on the drive was palpable. We all bubbling with imagining what it is going to be like. Like kids on Christmas morning. 

They first gave us a little lesson about manatees. They only have 3-5% body fat and can get cold stress in water under 68 degree water. The manatees on the Atlantic Ocean side are starving due to farmers polluted run off. They have to transport sea grass to that side of Florida to help support the manatee population over there.

Putting on a wet suit was interesting. I have never done that before. It was quite snug. There were a lot of inappropriate jokes happening while we were putting them on. It was like putting on pantyhose. You inch it up your legs…but also up your torso and arms. I apologized in advance to the other couple on our tour for me being immature.

We then boarded the boat. When we arrived at the area where the manatee were, there was another tour boat. They left like 20 minutes later and we had the rest of the area to ourselves. There were 5 of us on our tour. We had like an hour and a half just paddling around the area to ourselves. The water was 72 degrees. I was the last one out.

 We weren’t allowed to touch them because of the protection laws set in place to protect them. One of the manatees was fiddling with Sarah’s mask and “kissed” her. They were really cool to swim next to. They mostly were eating but some were sleeping. We also saw some cool and very large fish.

After the swim, our tour guide showed us there there were alligators and we got to see two gators sunbathing.

All in all, it was a super fun and memorable day.