We walked down to the water taxi this morning and took it to "Duck Island" (Ile aux Canards). It was a three minute ride and a very small island. The first thing we did was walk the entire perimeter which took under five minutes. There was one restaurant on the island which pretty much monopolized everything; they controlled the food, the beach chairs and canopies, and the snorkel rentals. There was hardly any accessible shade either other than the canopies so we bit the bullet and rented a canopy. We also rented the snorkeling gear but we brought our own food so we saved a bit there.
The snorkeling was good; they had an underwater trail that you could follow and each post would have information that you could read. The problem was it was all in French so that wasn't super helpful for us. But we got to see lots of interesting fish and schools of tiny fish swimming all around us. The highlight was definitely the octopus. It was awesome! I saw one at the beginning just before it crawled under a rock but couldn't get Matt's attention in time. But later we found a bigger one and we watched that thing for almost half an hour. It was really big. It's hard to describe octopus sizes since they don't really stretch out for you to take a measurement, but it's tentacles were between 1-2 feet long. And it's body was another foot high probably. Just the way it moved along the ocean floor was mesmerizing. And it would literally change colors before my eyes. One second it was off-white with brown spots and the next minute it was a dark brown/red color. It would change colors instantly, like a TV changes colors. I've never seen anything like it. And if you're wondering where the pictures are do't hold your breath; the entire time I was kicking myself for forgetting my camera! It was really really cool though. It was also amazing how many people swam close to it and never even noticed it. We literally watched it for half an hour and no one else even noticed until the last few minutes. From a quick google search I would say it was probably a "Common reef octopus" since that's what it looked like.
So anyway, after snorkeling we hung out on the beach for a bit fore taking the water taxi back to the mainland. We walked back to the room and hung out for a bit before dinner. We walked back down to the beach area and grabbed dinner at a place called Pizza & Pasta, which is definitely my kind of place. It was good but not the best, but it was pretty pricey. Which is to be expected on an island.
Here are a couple of pictures I took from Duck Island.
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