This week-end is a long week-end as in most of the world. My friend Michel (a former co-worker) is here for 9 days and is staying at our place. He is doing an advanced diving certification most of his time here.  However, this week-end, his schedule was not as busy so we headed out to some local tourist activities.  Friday we went by boat to Stingray City (no we were not stung ; there is absolutely no danger) and saturday we went to the Turtle farm which is now also a bird sanctuary & a shark aquarium.

 Here are the pictures of these two days.  Two absolutely gorgeous days (needed lots of sunscreen lotion)

On our way to stingray city

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Here we are at stingray city.  You can see the stingrays going to see the people & to get fed calamari.

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Here Michel & I hold a Stingray.

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Now to the Turtle farm. In this picture, I took a medium sized turtle in the petting area. We are allowed to pick them up & play with them.

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Here Julie feed a Cayman Parrots.  There birds are very pretty and were not very shy. 

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Also in the bird place, there were two strange looking birds ; a pair of “white Ibis”. They walk right up to you and start checking you out with their very long beaks ; toes, shorts, sandals, etc. Of course, it tickles terribly.  Julie compared their “bites” to chinese chopsticks. These birds dont hurt you and are not agressive at all. All three of us very much enjoyed our encounter with these friendly birds.

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 Now to the shark tank.  There are 6 reef sharks & 1 nurse shark.  By my estimates they are about 3 – 3.5ft long.  You can go snorkeling in the pool next to theirs and see them thru a window while snorkeling ; very cool. Here is a picture of one of the larger reef sharks.

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Once we left the turtle farm, we walked over to the ocean (the other side of the street) and looked at the waves crashing onto the the ironshore ; the sea was rough and the waves were quite impressive.

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