I think we’re slowly starting to get better at sleeping in, or at least laying around in bed lazily. We’re at least working on developing the skill.

We ate breakfast and then made our way to a small hike to the top of Monte Pirata. It’s 13 feet shy of being able to be called a mountain. It seems like they should have piled up 13 feet of dirt to get the designation. Mount sounds weak sauce.

The trail up was paved, and far better than the road to the trailhead. It was quite steep, which is good for my knees on the way up. Not so much on the way down. The view from the top was beautiful. You could see all around the island from there, as it is the highest point. Legend has it, it is where the pirates would bury their loot. We saw neither loot nor pirates, but it was still a good hike. We hiked in our swimming suits, as we were headed directly to the beach after.

We drove to Green Beach again, as that is where the snorkeling was good yesterday. The water seemed slightly more murky today, and the whole experience wasn’t quite as magical as it was yesterday. Maybe it was just new yesterday and everything was magical as a result. I was able to swim out a couple times looking for sea turtles or additional stingrays, I saw lots of pretty fish and occasionally beautiful coral. Most of the coral sadly was dead and doesn’t look that great. The beach, however, is beautiful.

We recognized our Airbnb neighbors at this beach and had a fun visit. Both are retired. She was a producer at NPR and he was a lawyer for a Jewish organization. We talked for at least an hour and could have talked more.

When we got in our car to drive to our next beach, we noticed one of the front wheel’s tread had started to rip off and was flapping noisily. We didn’t have great cell service, but were able to get in touch with our rental car agency. They hadn’t thought to put the jack in the back of the jeep, so we were pretty much dependent on them for a rescue. While we were waiting, another jeep drove by and he had a jack. We started to loosen the lug nuts, but it became clear that one of them wasn’t gonna come off with the lug nut wrench I had. After seriously bending the lug nut wrench we gave up. The rental car agency arrived amazingly fast, like in 20 minutes from when we called them, and we felt like we were pretty remote. I guess there are advantages to being on an island where you can get nearly anywhere within a half hour. I’m grateful they were responsive and sent somebody immediately. About 30 minutes after we discovered our flat tire we were back on the road exploring.

We tried to find a road toward one of the beaches we were at last night, but it was completely overgrown. I’ll post a picture below so you can appreciate what I mean by completely overgrown.

Tonight we’re gonna go kayak in Bio Bay with a tour group. The bay is full of bioluminescent creatures (dinoflagellates), like underwater fireflies, which make the bay glow blue. The best time to go is when there is no moon, but tonight was the only night that was going to work for our schedule.