Day on the Beach
Greetings to all.
The plan today was the beach. And what a lovely beach our hotel sat on! Well kept and clean, lots of white, soft sand and moderate breakers washing the shoreline. We could rent chairs, umbrellas and tents if we wanted. We did not rent any of these.
When we pulled open the curtain to let the morning sunlight into the room, we saw just off shore a school of dolphin feeding. If I had a telephoto lens for my travel camera, there would be pictures!
After breakfast, we dressed for the beach, grabbed some towels from the pool deck and headed South. Crossing the long foot bridge from the hotel pool area, we at last stepped down onto the white, soft sands.
We found a place to set up and call our own. Xavier, who remembered his first beach experience in Coco Beach, Florida, wanted to build sand castles. We had brought the plastic water glasses from our room to use as molds.
Soon, Xavier grew board with the sand. He wanted to splash in the waves. Alas, a new angst for Xavier's parents, and one which brought us to move a few hundred feet down the beach.
The shelf dropped off steeply just a few feet into the water. Though only dropping a foot or so, it was still too deep for Xavier, and too uncomfortable for his parents. We found a place where the shelf drop-off was much further out to sea.
After a couple of hours, Xavier wanted to go back to the hotel pool area and get into the hot tub. On the way back, he found something else to play with: the hose and shower used to rinse off the beach sand before entering the pool area. Once torn away from that, he made his way to the hot tub while Rebecca and I secured a few lounge chairs under an umbrella near the pool.
While Xavier played in the hot tub and shallow area of the pool, Rebecca and I hoped to relax in the shade of the umbrella, reconnect and have some adult conversation. It had been, after all, seven weeks since the two of us could relax and talk with each other.
Xavier made this difficult. He kept coming over and asking questions, or wanting someone to take him on a Lazy River ride. This did lead to Rebecca and I to seriously explore the idea of giving Xavier a sibling.
For dinner, we engaged a sort of tuk-tuk service to a restaurant down the beach. After dinner, we walked the beach back to our hotel. The sun had just set, but still we had plenty of dusky light.
Xavier kept stopping to dig in the sand. He had found a large bird feather and used the quill end to excavate. As we walked near the surf, we saw dark shapes moving in the water. These turned out to be a school of manta rays feeding on the small fish along the shoreline. They came right up to the edge of the surf foam, and they swam in the small breakers.
We took pictures, but there was not enough light for the pictures to show anything very well. Xavier saw the rays, but they did not impress him. Instead, while Mom and Dad watched the rays, he took opportunity to dig in the sand with his feather. Mom and Dad no longer telling him repeatedly to "follow and keep up," he could fully indulge in the his sand excavation project.