A Day at the Beach
Our last full day of the cruise was spent at the cruiseline's private island, Stirrup Cay, in the Bahamas after steaming for about 36 hours from Costa Maya - really a restful day at sea after three days in a row of tours.

We tendered (were transported by a smal boat from the cruiseship) to the island as the ship requires 40 feet of water. You could rent snorkeling equipment at the beach but Marolynn and I brought our own from our diving days.

As you can see, the water at Stirrup Cay is really clear, and when we swam out to the rocks in the foreground, there were a lot of tropical fish to see and a bit of coral. Even though it was November, some folks got a good surburn from laying out on the beach and in the water.



Stirrup Cay is a stirrup-shaped island with a lighthouse in the middle, so some of us decided to take a walk down a sandy road to see the lighthouse. The U.S. military used the island during World War II and again to track space launches from Cape Canaveral, and the lighthouse and the Stirrup Cay International Airport stemmed from those times. Clark Butler and Paul Griffin are in the picture. The lighthouse is pretty well buried in the bushes now and I don't know whether it is operational. A small Iguana was out on the rocks for a photo-op as we passed by.