Wednesday 22nd October
We were woken up a few minutes before the alarm by a text from our credit card company saying they had 'detected possible fraud' and have cancelled both cards and new cards are in the post. Well thank you very much for that... it's just fortunate that we've got another card we can use whist we're 4000 miles from home!!! Grrr. On top of that, the account looks OK to me - some odd stuff that might trigger a fraud flag, but nothing actually amiss. I requested a call back from the company so I could speak to someone... it's now 9 hours later and I'm still waiting!
Anyhow, today was our trip out to Egmont Key island. It's a small island out in the Gulf of Mexico, about 8 mines North of Anna Maria island. It's mainly a nature reserve and is only accessible by boat. We'd booked onto a trip with a local charter boat. It was us, two other couples and the captain.
The trip out started calmly enough until we hit the open water and the waves perked up to 'light chop' level. The boat tossed about a bit and at one point it was side on to the waves and the boat tipped over quite a lot before righting itself again. The captain had to turn back into the wind and tac over and back to get us nearer the island. We stopped briefly as we came across the upturned hull of another boat. It looked like it had been there for a while.
The captain called it into the coast guard who verified the location then reported back that it had already been investigated. When we got around the other side of the craft we could see a couple of holes in the bow beneath the water line. Nobody else was about.
We continued on to the island proper. It was a true tropical beach...
We'd brought along a chair and the sun umbrella and so we set up camp at one end of the beach.
After which, I had a dip in the sea for a while. Although the water was clear there wasn't much to see in the way of wildlife. One school of fish, one small ray and a couple of odd green fish that looked like small pike.
Once out, we had a bite to eat then I went off for a walk around the island. The place itself is a nature reserve mainly and the southern end is all off limits as it's a bird sanctuary. However, you can walk over the northern end of the island.
I saw a couple of birds, but oddly, this place is home to some tortoises who didn't seem that camera shy!
These are apparently Gopher tortoises.
We had two hours on the island before the boat (which had been parked off shore) returned to collect the six of us.
From there is was a much smoother ride back to the dock.
All in all we were out for 4 hours. On our return we were straight into the pool to cool off and get rid of the salt that seemed to have gotten everywhere. The back up onto the balcony for a relaxing afternoon.
A much better sunset tonight too.