Puerto Rico--Day 17

John got home about three hours later than he was originally supposed to (it happens when he’s on these trips), so he slept in late this morning. While he was sleeping, Ruby, Sam and I walked over to the hotel next door down the beach and bought some pastries from their little pastry/cookie/ice cream shop. Sam and Ruby both had a chocolate-chocolate chip muffin and I had a guava/cheese turnover of some kind. It was really tasty.

After John got up, we all got ourselves out the door and walked down to the safe beach for some snorkeling fun. John’s co-worker, Steve, joined us.

Here are the kids snorkeling with John and Steve (that’s him with the black goggles).

They saw lots of fish, a live sea urchin, and lots of shells and coral pieces.

Squig found this whole sea urchin shell. She was pretty excited about that.

Ruby spent a lot of time working on a sandcastle. It has a moat, a little piece of coral along the path to the entrance (because it’s called Coral Castle), a graveyard (to the right of the main building), a guard tower in front, and a flag (made from a leaf and a straw we found).

Later, she and Steve built an Iguana Bearded Dragon to guard the castle. There is an extensive cave system for the dragon, including a kitchen with a stove and fridge. You can see the entrance to the cave in front of the dragon there, and the kitchen is hard to see, but it's in between the dragon and his cave. His kitchen had pots and pans, too, so he'd have something to cook with. And we found a little green army guy to stand guard on the guard tower.

Here’s a close-up of the dragon. First he had little green beady eyes, like iguana’s do (we found some berries from a tree), but Ruby thought he needed bigger eyes. She also gave him toes.

Just as we were leaving, they caught this little crab. He was pretty easy going for a crab, and didn’t seem to mind being picked up. The kids called him “The Frab” or “The Crog” because he was speckled like a frog.

All in all, a fun day at the beach. Except that Ruby managed to lose her sandals. We looked all over and couldn't find them anywhere. How do you lose bright pink sandals when they were right there? We even dug through the sand to see if they were buried somehow. Sigh.

I guess she can always wear her rain boots!