Islas Santa Inez

~ 2 August 2019 ~

We took off Friday morning, with the plan of spending the weekend exploring Chivato. It was dead clam, so we went for the 3 islands off the point first - Isla Santa Inez. We anchored just on the Northern end in about 30 feet of water. We had really been looking forward to this snorkel so we were off in the dinghy asap. We anchored the dinghy off the beach on the southern tip of the island. We were aiming to circumnavigate. As we went around the point - we had to swim pretty far out. Underwater there were huge boulders and tons of life! There was some current - and wave action and some places were deeper than others. Itw a probably one of the more “advanced” snorkels. BUt also one of the coolest! The visibility was amazing - I’m pretty sure i could see forever. And there were so many big fish! We typically see Angel fish - but here we saw schools of huge ones! The big bounders were filled with life - coral, tiny fish, big fish. We saw several bigger fish with those iridescent dots. They were about the size of my hand, which is the biggest we’ve seen. There were huge schools of trigger fish and a flat fish. One of my favorite things to do is dive through a school of fish.initially they all move, but as you just sit there, they come back and circle around you. Then i just drift up through them. I love it. Here, we both dove down 25 feet, laid in the sand at the bottom and you could stare up at the schools above you.

We continued on around the corner - we read the East side was the best so we wanted to check it out. But...it was pretty boring compared to the point. WE started finding huge conchs though - the biggest we’ve seen. We collected a few empty ones but decided to go back and just check out the point again.

That was definitely one of our favorite snorkels.