Today we were booked on to a snorkelling with the manatees trip.
3 hours for $65 turned out to be the best value ever!
We used the Plantation Adventure Center for our trip as they are based on site in the hotel we stayed in. The cost included towels, hot chocolate (Swiss Miss mmmmm) and all the snorkel gear.
The company say they will take between 11 - 14 people on the boat and there were about 14 of us for the 10.30 trip so I assumed we'd all be on the one boat - wrong - we were split up and hubby and I were lucky enough to be put on a boat with just one other couple so we had pretty much a private trip. Perfect!
The other couple were certified divers like ourselves so were comfortable in the water - very useful when you just have to float face down with a large marine mammal milling around you.
There were 2 Captains out with us, Lance and Steve, and they were extremely skilled in finding the manatees and helping us have the best experience in the water with these gently creatures. Steve supervised us (and the manatees) and took a camera underwater and we were able to buy some film footage / photos.
You have to watch a video all about how to behave in the water for the safety of the manatees - who are obviously the No. 1 priority : - no touching, feeding, standing on (!) or harming in any way the manatees etc etc. All I can say is that someone needs to make a video for the manatees! We were frantically trying not to touch them / harm them etc while the manatees were trying to kiss Hubby ( or eat his face - we couldn't decide), hitting me with their tail, swimming under us and then surfacing bringing us up on their backs. It was chaos - wonderful, heart warming, super cool, fun chaos and we loved it. We were out for over 2 1/2 hours and saw a mother and baby (who we left in peace), a group of up to 5 adults and then a single female who was feeding. We also relaxed at the end of the trip with a snorkel over the springs. Fabulous.
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