Screaming hot!

The sun was out in full force today with just a slight breeze, none of which was hitting the beach at Smugglers.  I met Eileen there after I got back from the morning dives and found it to be too warm to sit on the beach chairs.   They do have some shady spots so that was good.  Had a couple of beer there and a really good lunch.  We went out through the channel and had a nice snorkel.  What a difference in water temperature between their little bay and the open ocean.  It felt refreshing on the way out but coming back in it felt like you were swimming in a bathtub.  Eileen got a good look at a lionfish that was out hunting. We don't often see them moving around much.
Came back to the house, showered and then went to West End and hung out at the Friday happy hour at CocoLobo for a little while.  Talked to Ralph and Karen for a couple of minutes.  They'd gone to Sandy Beach for a snorkel yesterday and got eaten up by the sand flies on the beach.  Ralph was suffering today.  Walked down to Tongs for supper, nothing has changed there, same good Thai food.  Home early and we're both feeling like an early bedtime.  Something about the heat and the outdoors makes one really sleepy in the evening.....
The two dives were good, just me, John, and the dive master..  The first was a drift dive in front of West End that finished up down near Half Moon Bay.  The second was closer to West Bay where the wall wasn't very big and where there were lots of open sandy areas with coral hummocks and channels.  Four or five turtles, white spotted filefish, scrawled filefish, ocean triggerfish, one normal sized spotted drum and then about fifty feet away was his granddaddy.  That was the biggest spotted drum that any of us, including the divemaster had ever seen.  Saw once patch of coral that had a number of blue cleaner shrimp hanging out.  Apparently fish will come by these "cleaning stations", and the shrimp will crawl around on them and clean them off.  The divemaster said that he's stuck his hand in there before and had them crawl on it.

Not certain what these are.  I thought they were permit when they swam by, but the picture just isn't right.  They are more likely a type of jack or palometa, don't look like the jack from back home...For scale, each one is about a foot across.

I think this guy is a Red Hind.

A pair of white Spotted Filefish.  Quite a difference between the two.  I don't know of it's a male/female or an adult/juvenile pair.
Tomorrow we might take a drive up to Palmetto Bay.  It's a nice looking spot, but a bit off of the beaten path.  With the sun in the last two days, the road should be dried up pretty good.  We'll pack a cell phone just in case.......