Swimming With Sea Turtles and Taking Toirtoise Walks
Swimming With Sea Turtles
A Hawksbill Turtle, also found around St John regularly, but we swam with Green Sea Turtles. Photo by Ariel Kaufman, a previous guest of ours and excellent photographer.
I have to say that as of recent turtles have become a hot topic around our household. Not only sea turtles but also local indigineous red footed tortoises. Our 3 year old daughter, has had the blessed experience of interacting with both types of these creatures and it has made a huge impact on our daily lives. It seems every children’s book we open or children’s film we watch has turtles and tortoises in it ironically which delights our daughter with never ending amusement to connect her experiences with turtles. We have two red footed tortoises, Lilac and Tulip, that live on our property that she cares for, walks, sings to and feeds every day. She has learned all about their physical bodies, scientific facts, biology terms, and habitats all from a little tortoise that walked down our country road and wandered in front of our white picket fence. The tortoise found a loving home with our kid and will one day be set free back into the wild. A magical pet for a child. That is our turtle story on land.
Lilac, the smaller of the two tortoises with our Daughter
This is our turtle story from the sea.
On a beautiful warm sunny summer afternoon when the sun just lingers for hours as it slowly sets in the west Jared and little A went on a father daughter adventure. The best kind of bonding experiences. They went for an early evening swim in Maho Bay and with little A riding on Dad’s back they swam out to the deep water of the Bay where the sea grass beds lie and there before them awaited an unsurpassed magical experience with nature. 6 giant sea turtles were feeding on their dinner of sea grass diving down and coming back up for air inches away from our daughter’s face. She was elated and giggling with joy as turtles popped up all around her. She truly felt like a mermaid, one of her favorite mythical creatures. They were the only two humans around in the pristine warm waters of the Caribbean Sea and shared that unforgettable experience together.
St John Life in a quiet valley
They came home and told me all about it and I was so happy for them. This experience happened all by chance and that is what makes it magical. They even wrote a sea chant about it!
There is no better way
to finish the day
then to swim with turtles
in Maho Bay!