What an incredible day we had today! Two last-minute dives were an unexpected treat. Last night at dinner I realized that our flight was more than 24 hours away and I could dive again today. As for Lisa, she was dived out. Too bad: she missed a doozy.

As Lisa and the kids slept, Jojo the dolphin, a local regular, paid a surprise visit to the beach. From the raised dock we could look straight down on him as he waited patiently for the captain to fire up the boat. It seems Jojo, according to the staff, is “not quite right in the head.” The scars on his nose are evidence of his fondness for spinning boat props. All I could do was picture Jojo approaching the back of the boat saying, “Oooo, shiny!” Soon though we would have evidence that even a dolphin a bit slow in the head was every bit as graceful as any animal on this planet can be.

He proceeded to follow our boat for the next 10 minutes flying effortlessly from our wake, 5 or more feet in the air. At times he leapt forward in 6-second intervals. At times he skimmed along just under the surface without so much as a wiggle, enjoying the free ride he had received. At some point he slipped quietly below the surface never to be seen again. I was sad that he left us just before we got into the water.

Just for my own personal notes, the dive locations we visited today were Sunset Strip and Cathedral, where we had dived previously. I don’t know about Sunset Strip as a name. I never saw one movie star. If I had to name it, I’d have to call this the place to find large animals. There was simply no other single dive of the seven I did where so many large–and in some cases huge–animals were spotted.

My fellow diver Peggy, whom I met along with her husband, Bruce from Reno gave the rather hilarious symbol for lobster just after we dove over the top edge of the wall. (Extend both of your index fingers from the top of your forehead and wiggle them as you would if you were a space alien and they were your antennae. Now look in the mirror and try not to get amused.) Living in a wildlife sanctuary in a comfy little cave with a view out either side, he was about as safe as any lobster could be and destined to live to a ripe old age and grow to unparalleled size. As it was, he was nearly two and a half feet from antennae to tale. I, lacking a fork, any butter or means for cooking, left him for the next diver to discover, but his sighting left me chomping at the bit to make a discovery of my own. I wouldn’t have to wait long.

Only minutes later I spotted what any diver would tell you is a rare site: a moray eel all the way out of his hole. Add to that the fact that this particular specimen was just less than 6 feet long and we knew we were diving in a special location. He lay lazily 20 feet below us on a small sandy shelf at the bottom of a small wall. He kept a vigilant eye on us.

Apparently my eyes were not peeled enough, because I missed the two 8-foot white-tipped reef sharks that swam slowly by. My fellow divers also reported a pair of spotted rays with about a 6-foot wingspan that graced us with their presence. Both the sharks and the rays are regulars in this area but my sighting of them was not meant to be on this dive–I was busy scouring the ocean floor for other beautiful sights.

If there was a way to describe the glowing purple coral that looked like a duffle bag that stood on its end with the top of the bag rolled down a few inches I would probably compare it to a very large geode. (Geodes are those round rocks that are cracked open and on the inside they are filled with gorgeous multi-colored crystals. You usually see them in gift shops in tourist-riddled areas.) Unfortunately any words that I could come up with would not do it justice, so I will not even try.

If you can’t tell by now that I’ve developed an obtuse fondness for scuba diving, you haven’t been reading. in fact, I may have slightly ruptured my ear drum on the first dive of this trip (I’ve ruptured one before and the pain was easily recalled,) yet I bore the pain for 6 more dives. I also spent the majority of the trip saying, “What did you say? I’m sorry, I’m completely deaf right now.” But there’s more to the ocean than scuba…there’s snorkeling.

Sara, Lisa, Emily and I walked the half mile down the beach to Coral Gardens where we had gone snorkeling a couple of days ago. Before we were even in the water Sara spotted a six-inch white flounder just a few feet from the shore. Spotted? I should say almost stepped on. It scuttled across the bottom for a few feet and then settled neatly into the white sand. Ten seconds of flailing around left it half-buried and completely camouflaged, only it’s round eyes poking out of the sand.

But the real story of the snorkeling adventure was Emily’s progression from timid beach comber to Jacque Cousteau wanna’ be. She spent a half-hour or more walking along the beach in foot-deep water, yet only a 10 feet away from some magnificant underwater sights. She finally dove in, and soon her glimpses of incredible fish, coral and the like masked her fear of the oceanic unknown.

My own fears were always present just as they have always been to some extent. I’ve never felt completely comfortable swimming in any large body of water. This day was no different, but my own insecurities would soon add to what would have otherwise have been a minor incident. Instead, I found myself swimming for my life.

Once Jody and Lisa had come in from swimming around the roped-off area a couple hundred meters out (the ropes kept swimmers from entering the fire-coral area) I decided to make the swim myself. Face my fears I thought, and they would go away. But once I was at the farthest point around the circle as I could get, my fears made my mind wander when I thought I heard someone on shore blowing a whistle and yelling something. I held my head briefly above the water and listened to the man on shore frantically blowing his whistle and alternatively shouting what I thought was, “Shark alert!”

I did my best not to panic as I slipped my head back under water and began a swift swim stroke back toward shore. But panick I did. “Why had I left my swim-fins on shore,” I thought. “Should I kick and possibly attract a shark, or is that just a myth?” Most importantly, all I had to do was get in further than the next guy, I rationalized.

My luck changed when I slowed my stroke briefly to get an update from the shore. I figured I had swumt for about a minute straight and was further in now, and maybe I was in a safer area. Perhaps I could look up and see where the people on shore were pointing. They were pointing alright, but not toward any shark. They were pointing at the snorkelers who had wandered into the dangerous fire-coral, roped-off area. The man on shore was not yelling “shark alert” as I had heard, but “snorkelers!” My fears had gotten the better of me that day and it would make a good story at dinner.

Meanwhile back at the resort, Patrick has hanging with family and had made the most of his day by “living” on the water slide. Apparently he had simply never quit all day. Up the stairs, down the slide, swim to the edge. Up the stairs, down the slide, swim to the edge. You get the idea. We had to bribe him to get him out of the pool. It made him a stronger swimmer though: We had brought arm-floaties on the trip, but Patrick wouldn’t need them.

At the end of the day, we said goodbye to Les’ favorite two managers, Mercedes and Marie at our favorite restaurant Schooners. We ate overlooking the ocean as the sun set and ended the night with Emily singing a rousing rendition of Summer Nights in front of a cheering crowd at karaoke night. Dad glowed.

It was the perfect ending to a perfect vacation brought on by one man’s love of his entire clan. Thank you, Les for a wonderful vacation and for helping us create a lifetime of memories surrounded by family.

A watery-eyed Lester is shown here on his 78th birthday–shortly after the trip–opening a gift from the family: a framed portrait of all 13 of us on the beach.

Click the photo(s) here to see a larger version and don’t forget to view the entire day’s photos too.

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Post Script: I found out after I got home that JoJo the dolphin is somewhat of a celebrity in the area. He is one of only a handful of dolphins in the world that chooses to associate with humans. He has several websites devoted to him and was declared a national treasure of the Turks and Caicos in 1989. He’s been featured in an IMAX film, Dolphins, as well as a companion book of the same name by Tim Cahill. He was also in a 1995 PBS documentary, In the Wild: Dolphins, with Robin Williams.

If the dive staff thought that he was “not quite right in the head,” it may have been from the many collisions he has suffered with motorboats and jet skis. Each of the scars on his head and nose tells a story of a bout with a water skier or a boat prop. There is a great story about him that was published in SoundNet, the newsletter of the oceanica project. I am elated now more than ever that I had the opportunity to “meet” JoJo in Grace Bay.