Day 15: Bio Bay

I spent most of the day RiNaEP, but kayaked out into the beautiful shimmering bioluminescent bay this evening. Bad pictures and full details to come.

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This morning it rained, so I stayed in, had some breakfast, and watched a movie (thanks Jerms!). Sort of a vacation-from-vacation.

Then I decided to do a short hike, and went out to Cayo de Tierra (Isle of Earth, as oppose to Cayo de Afuera, Island of Overthere - its disconnected brother), a small island connected to Esperanza by a land bridge. About half-way around the trails dry up, and it turns into scrambling around the island. Needless to say, I loved it. The tide-pools were full of life, including as many sea-urchins as was geometrically possible and these little bumblebee fish. A few hundred feet later and the rocks changed, and if it weren't for the palm trees in the background I could have been convinced it were New Zealand.

I found an almost comfortable, slightly shaded section of coral and spent my afternoon reading. As the sun got lower and it cooled off, I traded in an out of my shade to a sun-litBy25' promentory trying (failing) to de-farmify my farmers tan. Only when I set off again down some ugly scree did I realize the promontory I draped myself over was cantilevered - Lion King style - over the surf.

On my way back into town I signed up for a Mosquito Bay "Bio Bay" tour, were you can kayak out on the bioluminescent bay. Microscopic dinoflagellates shoot lightning-bug chemicals in the water when they are disturbed, causing a glow whereever you touch the water. It sounded cool, everyone said you had to do it, and moonrise was finally late enough. I went back to my house, made too much spaghetti, and came back down for the tour.

The van was ancient, with a swarm of gnats living in it, ghetto upholstery, and barely-there headlights. Which was part of the fun. A half-hour after I was told to arrive a few other people showed up, then we drove around to a few hotels before heading out of town and down a terrible road to the put-in point. Trees scraped both windows as it lurched over various ruts. The woman next to me had a better view out the front window, and every so often she would just close her eyes.

Through a camera, the bay was disappointing. You'd need to shoot video at 20,000 iso (for comparison, normal is 400, and the most my camera can handle is 1600) to do it justice. Through eyes, though, the bay exceeded every expectation. I got my own canoe since I have no friends, and we set out doing our best to "Follow the green glowstick." At first, as your eyes are still adjusting from the flashlights and headlights, you mistake the glow for an abnormal reflection in your wake, but as your eyes get more sensitive you realize you can make out little shimmers throughout, and that it's brighter than the stars (of which there are a million. I kept looking for sattelites and saw a falling star, so make that 999,999 instead). Every time you dip your paddle there's a bloom of blue, and if you follow another kayak there's a diffused glow. And as impressive as it was under the water, it was that much more impressive on the surface of the water, where every glow was like a brilliant spark. The water dripping off the paddle would create little starbursts. I never grew tired of splashing just a few drops; they'd glow slightly in the air and then in landing set off a fireworks of light.

We got out to one of the best locations in the bay and the guides tied our kayaks together. I was expecting to be told how wonderful and fragile the ecosystem is and took out my camera (the only thing in my rainproof backpack, and tied in a plastic bag inside that) to take some pictures. But then a particularly large man in a particularly leaky kayak fell in, and we realized this is where we could swim. I took a few pictures, enough that you can get a feel for the color of it, if not the intensity or the pinpoint nature of the surface lights.

As I was tying up my bag I heard a girl ask her sister "Are you in yet?" "No..." "Well why not?" - Which I feel sums it up pretty well, so I carefully laid my pack in the center of the canoe and slid in, clothes and all. It was fantastic. I said a spontaneous prayer and played in the water for at least half an hour; I kept track of my watch only to compare the glowing of the dial to the glowing of the dinoflagellates... they weere about tied one-on-one, but as a team there was no contest.

So I spent some time being really still... then convulsing octopus-style through the water all at once, clapping under water, and my favorite, squirting water out of my hands, underwater. You could see the currents and eddies as if you'd had radioactive sand in your hand.

When we headed back I was one of the leading kayaks, and we went through a patch even more brilliant than where we swam. The drain-holes at the bottom of the kayak lit up, the bow-wake was a fluttering and coruscating ribbon, and when fish darted - or jumped! - away from the kayaks their path would blossom in the darkness.

On the drive home I was in the back seat, hunched over, jealous of the kid next to me who had between 18" and 8" of headroom; I had between 6" and... less than that. But that ceased to be a problem when we came upon the other van, stalled out in the road. We had been jealous of the other van, what with its lack of upholstery problems, it seems it choose engine problems instead, and wire-rot over dry-rot. As you may remember, this trail had absolutely no clearance to either side, so we were there for the duration. We heard several mutterings about starter motors, a vacationing mechanic got out to help, and eventually we traded drivers and got moving again. Our first driver was very good, something we only realized when the second wove back and forth all over the two-lane road. Not because he had been drinking, but because the steering-wheel had a quarter-turn of play in it. There's a feature you don't get on the 50$ version of this tour.

In short... marvelous, and a beautiful conclusion to my time in Puerto Rico.