Coral Reefs and Rough Waves

We made a visit back to my favorite North Shore beach. It started out pretty calm, we snorkeled out to the reef. Richard found this lovely Spanish Dancer slug.

Here it is hiding deeper in the reef

Another one of my favorite urchins (pencil urchins)

A cute little snowflake eel 

Trying to scare Richard away from his hole.

When we returned to shore.. the wave situation had changed dramatically! They were not calm little lappy waves, But big churning waves with a vicious undertow. Getting out was rough but the waves were so much fun I just had to go back in! 

I took my boogie board and figured I'd try and teach myself to body surf. These particular waves changed the water depth really quick. You can go from standing in chest deep water to ankle deep in a matter of seconds. It was on one of those instances where I jumped belly fist into the water. The last under tow had cleared a nice section of basket ball sized rocks, and of course that is right were I landed. I broke my board beyond repair and did this to my leg:

OWWWW! Funny thing is it didn't manage to phase me enough to get out of the water. I sure am feeling it now though.. sanitizing it was less than fun as well.

We both got to work on our tan's a little too. They don't ever show up well in pictures and we still get asked where we are visiting from but we are significantly darker, Richard especially. If we ever get off this night shift schedule he's going to look like the real deal in a hurry :)