Adventures of a Tribe

The Caves

Posted on November 11, 2016 Updated on November 11, 2016

The creatures and I raised the sail and set out toward Norman Cay to swim in ‘The Caves’, and right as we left, a huge Dutch cruise ship decided to leave too.

A pilot boat pulled up along side us asking for us to stay put until the ship had turned and was on its way, and so we did. While sitting there, keeping Tanda Malaika in one spot, I couldn’t help but feel like we were in an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine. We were the tiny, friendly little boat waiting patiently for a huge sassy ship to move on through. We could feel the power of its bow thrusters as water swirled around us – even from a couple hundred yards away.

One thing we have found, being here in the BVI among all the charter boats, is that in general charter folks and cruising folks are two different breeds of people. Charter people can be inconsiderate, extremely loud and unfriendly. They are in their own world, trying to stay as drunk as possible for as long as possible – which is crazy because most of them pay about $10000 for the boat per week and most likely don’t remember the trip when they’re done.

There were two caves we anchored by to explore, and the exciting part was that we didn’t take dive lights with us.

In one of them we swam in as far as the light was reflecting in, and the cave narrowed significantly and darkened drastically. We had no idea how deep it went, what was lurking beneath, or how narrow it would get…so I led the way and the creatures followed. Eventually at the very end when I could finally touch bottom, I felt beach sand beneath me feet and pulled myself up onto what felt like a tiny beach to jump out and scare the kids. Unfortunately they know me too well and weren’t scared. Swimming back out was easier because far down at the opening we could see light. Jude took this right at the entrance.

The other cave was less eventful but did have some beautiful soft corals.

Some of them were so dense it made the water look purple.

What a beautiful sight.

I feel so at home in the ocean. (in case you didn’t already know)

I forgot to tell a story from a few weeks ago when Danny was still here; He and I were snorkeling and I was looking for shells. I saw a beautiful one about 12 ft down and pointed to it, so he dove down to pick it up. At that point we saw a small tentacle around it, and realized that an octopus had it or was laying it down. Danny surfaced and said it looked empty and asked if I wanted it, so I told him I’d love to send it home with Kjira when she leaves. He dove back down and picked it up and we continued to swim. As we neared Tanda Malaika I noticed that the shell did infact have something living in it and Danny and I both knew that meant we’d stolen the octopus’s lunch from him. I felt bad, but Danny felt TERRIBLE and kept saying how awful he felt. We told the creatures that we were going to take the dinghy back since it was a far swim, and return it to the octopus. Some of the creatures joined us and we went back to the spot – the octopus was still there and Danny swam down to him, gave him his lunch, apologized profusely and all was right in the world once more. The octopus accepted the meal and the apology.

Speaking of Danny, it looks like he’ll be a couple days longer than we had thought (after finding out he’d be longer than he was going to be before that). Since he is 12 hours ahead of us, we talk in the morning when he’s going to bed and in the evening when I’m going to bed. I miss my Sweetheart, and the creatures miss their Dad.