After our amazing snorkeling experience in the Blue Hole, our tour guide drove us to the next snorkeling stop on our tour, one of the favorite snorkeling spots on Grand Bahama island called Paradise Cove. It is a very fitting name. This cove looks like an image out of a postcard, beautiful sands lined with palm trees and glistening tap water clear, turquoise waters.

This time we would be swimming out to the reef where there was a max depth of 30ft. Typically when I am swimming I like to stay in depths where I can stand. I’m a good swimmer, but I have trouble trusting my own abilities. In deep water, there are so many unknowns, you never know what might be under you. This has often been a fear of mine, just the thought of dark deep water makes me shudder, but I was too in love with snorkeling and ready to face my fears. I took no life jacket. The guide had a flotation device strapped to him that gave me some reassurance, so I was determined to stay close to him when we got to the deep part.

The water was a little cooler than the last spot, we all jumped in to warm up to the water. I strapped on my flippers, it was my first time that I would be swimming with them. I strapped on my mask and out we went. At first, it was mostly sand, and the coral slowly increased the further we went out.

It didn’t take long before we spotted a sea turtle. I have seen turtles before from the beach in Barbados and in Hawaii, but I had never seen them up close underwater. The turtle was beautiful. It was so calm and didn’t seem to mind that a few humans swam just five feet away. He swam through the water effortless. Just a simple push of his turtle flippers and he would glide through the water. I marveled at how at home and free all these creatures were. In captivity animals don’t look the same, they don’t have the same spark that their wild kin does.

We swam a little further then saw another turtle and another. Me and two of the other snorkelers watched this turtle, who was just a few feet away, gliding along the bottom with three large sucker fish on its back. My goggles got foggy so I went up to clean them and while I did the turtle swam right for us coming within just a foot or so before turning. They were not afraid of us at all.

We continued swimming and someone spotted a stingray. I went back under to see it and there it was submerged in the sand, he stuck up like a big mound, you couldn’t miss him. He was the biggest ray I’ve seen, his tail with a stinger stuck straight out lying atop the sand. The stinger alone had to have been over three, maybe four feet long. We all kept a safe distance just in case. I swam along the side of it and saw his eye peeking out from the sand. He was looking right at me. and we held one another's gaze for a moment. I wondered what he thought of me, was he scared of me? He didn't try to swim away, he just lay there perfectly still, not taking his eye off me. Or Maybe to him, I was just another sea creature swimming by.

I have seen stingrays from above, I have touched them in tanks, but I never got to look into one's eye like this and meet him in his own home under the sea. I treasured this moment as we continued on through the reef, honored that I got to meet this beautiful creature.

We continued swimming out to the reef and the water became deeper. More coral spotted the bottom fire coral, the yellow coral with white tips spotted the bottom. It was hard to stand now, the water was getting deeper and you didn’t want to accidentally step on coral. The waves were also picking up making it hard to balance when standing. Water kept getting in my snorkel from the waves. Coming up to dump it out was a little scary because I had to tread water. It’s easy to float when you are underwater. But above water, you have to keep kicking and try to dodge the waves while clearing out your snorkel. But even with my snorkel acting up this snorkeling experience was amazing.

As we kept swimming, my husband found two sea biscuits. They are a type of sand dollar, but a bit bigger and more round. He dove down a few feet to get them for me. That hole on the underside is their mouth where they have teeth. In the dead ones, you can still hear the teeth rattling around inside. Even little creatures like these are fascinating. They were already dead so we kept them, something we can remember our first snorkeling trip by.

The coral became denser and I began seeing beautiful blue and pink fan coral among many other different kinds. The water was too deep to stand now and it kept getting deeper. The sea floor was uneven and rocky It looked like something I had only seen on BBC’s Planet Earth. We went over one rock ledge and it dropped off to about 20ft. we swam around and the water was still clear and blue as ever. Groups of fish swam around us and I swam with them, feeling like a bit of a fish myself. I had never swum in water this deep. There’s no bottom to touch, you are just floating there and swimming around with your fins just like all the fish.

A school of sergeant major fish swam circles around us and I just enjoyed watching them. They seemed to like our company. After a while of being out there, we headed back. On the way back I stopped for a moment and closed my eyes, just taking it in and feeling the waves. I love water, the sea, the fish, and the many other beautiful creatures I know nothing about. I was honored to get a little glimpse into their world.

We ate, then finished off our tour by kayaking at a lake. It’s not really a lake, its' saltwater and attached to the ocean.

Many creatures, fish, sharks, jellyfish, use this area as a nursery. It was wavy so we didn’t see much. But once we got to a calmer spot by the mangroves we saw hundreds of little jellyfish scattered across the bottom, some were small and the size of a golf ball, others were much larger than my hand. They would lie on the bottom upside down with their tentacles up, looking like coral or little stars. They were clear on their tops and off-white or yellowish color which is face up when they lie on the bottom.

The guide picked one up with his hand out of the water so we could all see. The edges of his squishy body drooped around his hand looking like a pile of jelly. Apparently, their stings are very mild. We also saw schools of small fish darting through the mangroves and a few fish jumped. They may have been fleeing larger fish or a nurse shark.

We love snorkeling now and we can’t wait till we get to do it again. If you have never snorkeled, do yourself a favor and try it. It’s another world and so different from seeing these creatures from above the water, you get to enter into their world and see them face to face. There’s nothing like it and if I could live in the water there with them I would!