Tuesday October 23rd
[20:06]
We got a phone call today in the apartment, which was an event in itself. It was the people from the Sanibel Thriller letting me know that they had a leak in the engine of their speedboat and therefore they would have to cancel today's run at 1pm. It sounds like they are expecting to do two runs tomorrow, after the boat is repaired, as they have offered us a 3pm run tomorrow which we have accepted. Fingers crossed.
So we had some spare time to fill today. We loaded up the car and headed to the North end of Sanibel, just as it becomes Captiva Island. There is a beach there that was supposed to have been suffering from this Red Tide issue that some beaches on Sanibel have been exposed to. It is algae bloom that is toxic to fish and in heavy enough quantities can indeed turn the sea a reddish colour, but in most cases it's invisible and not harmful to most people unless you're allergic to it. We'd seen signs of it on our beach earlier in the week, a line of fish washed up high on the beach - by the time we were there, they'd been half eaten by the birds. It was mentioned that this beach at the end of Sanibel was even worse - but to be honest, it was actually a nice little beach - lots of shells and even a couple of Manatee swam by which is our first sighting of that animal this holiday. They don't leap about in the water like dolphin, so are much harder to photograph and the following demonstrates!
Yes, that small bump is a Manatee nostril, poking out to take a breath of air. I don't think these were very large - they can grow to huge sizes - but it was nice to see them in the wild.
We then headed back south to the Ding Darling wildlife resort. This is a 4 mile drivable track that takes you around some lakes with leaping fish and sometimes alligators (but not this time).
We stop off at the side of the road to take photos outside, so to make life easier, Linda took over the driving whilst we were in the park. This is the closest she's come to actual driving in the US.
I think she quite enjoyed the challenge!
We dropped into a couple of the t-shirt places along the main high-street and bought some bits then returned to base to have a go at our cheesecake from last night. In the end, we still couldn't finish it all, even though it was just two slices. So the remains are back in the fridge for another time.
As the sun started to go down we went down to the pool and for a good time had the place to ourselves - can you tell?
This evening we went back to the local Italian place, Matzaluna, for a nice meal. Coming out it's odd to think that it's still the low 80's even though it's been dark a hour. It was a very mild and pleasant night.