Our last full day was planned for a beach day, even though they were calling for occasional showers or possible thunderstorms. We had several showers the night before – which just seems to make it feel hotter. A shower there (which is in hurricane season) blows up quickly, then is often a torrential downpour for about 6 minutes - and then it is gone. No temperature drop.
Everyone local told us to get to the beach early if we wanted to rent chairs, as it tends to get really crowded later on, and there was supposed to be 2 cruise ships in port at the Dockyards, one with 5000 passengers. I was feeling a bit guilty for lollygagging (we like to enjoy breakfast outside on the front porch, then get dressed later) as we didn’t make it to the bus stop until around 9:30. But the other lady at the bus stop told us we were doing great and would be there early. And we were! There was likely only 20 or 30 people there, and it is a very big beach. The water of course was a beautiful turquoise, and the sand was a fine pinkish beige white. The water temperature was fabulous! very likely 90 degrees or more (for anyone who still thinks in farenheit), so maybe around 28 degrees Celcius, ish.
Apparently it looks very pink at sunrise and sunset – neither of which we managed to see! We brought all of the pet parents floaty toys this time and had a great time playing in the waves. The beach authorities had at least 4 signs up with warnings about rip tides, but people seemed to be quite cautious. We didn’t notice any pull in the water, other than the usual wave action. They had foot washing stations, clean washrooms, changerooms, showers, plus a bar and small restaurant combined, which was everything you needed for the day. Lounge chair rentals were $20 each, whether you use them for 30 minutes or for all day. They had $15 umbrella rentals too, but said it was too windy for it while we were there. Good thing we brought our own!
There was one part of the beach that was almost completely circled by giant rocks, making the water very calm there, great for little kids. But that was also where all the fish were hanging around! What I first thought was seaweed was actually thousands of tiny silver fish, about 1.5 inches long.
Then some kids were very excited by a large fish, then two and three or more.
You could see a brilliant patch of neon green or orange on them – and each one was likely 18 inches long and big enough to eat for dinner. They were popping in and out of some of the pool areas and entertaining everyone. Too bad I don’t have a GoPro.
Did it rain? Yep! Right when we had ordered our lunch at the outdoor restaurant. Randy went to protect our towels and bags with the beach umbrella, but it had stopped before our food came out – so just a 6 minute mad downpour. I just invited ourselves to join a young couple from New Jersey for lunch, since they had one of the tables with an umbrella over it and it seated 4. It was a nice lunch! Then we were back to playing in the water again. Overall we had a great day there, from about 10am to 4pm, before the cruise ship people started to overrun the beach. We decided we could wrap up our beach day then, and there were some suspicious looking clouds starting to appear. Once we were in the changerooms the skies opened up and there was a deluge of rain! But within about 5 minutes it was just spitting, and we were a bit worried about missing our bus with it being a 9 minute climb back up the hill to the bus stop. It ended up being perfect timing.
