Viva Venezuela! Part Three

I last left off our honeymoon recaps with a general description of our time in Los Roques Parque Nacional in Venezuela.  To sum up the last two posts? Total awesomeness.

And since I've realized that writing detailed recaps are not really my strong suit in the blogging department, I-ma let the pictures do most of the talking and show off some of the cooler things we saw/did during our 5 days in Los Roques.

First off, it was fish central.  Bone fish, barracudas, squirrel fish and parrot fish, to name a few, abound. (Also, lest you think I am a dorky, fish-freak who knows all these names and species, let me assure you I am not.  It's Mr Trail Mix who is supplying me with all these names.  He's the fish-freak!)

 Here's a shot I got of a trumpet fish we found while traversing the shallow waters of one of the islands...

We also found many different types of crustaceans, including starfish, sand dollars, sea urchins, crabs and many, many various sea shells.  One of our favorite activities that kept us entertained for hours (because we're five years old) was finding large rocks underwater to overturn and see what was underneath.

Check it out...

Not exactly your typical-looking starfish but mad cool nonetheless!

A different type of starfish...

Ooooooh, lookie at all those starfishies.  Run, fishies, run! Good example of why turning over rocks was so fun!

And yet another variety of starfish.  This one was pretty! And please note, all the hands shown in these photos are Mr Trail Mix's.  I was way, way too chicken to pick one of those suckers up.

One day we went kayaking around the islands to see what we could see.

Better not step on one of these monster sea urchins.  Ouch! 

During our kayaking adventures (for the record, those suckers are not as easy to maneuver as they look) we happened upon a little beach bar on one of the islands.  The cost for four cans of Solera beer (a Venezuelan specialty) and one platter of fruta di mar? A whopping $12, if you do the conversion from bolivares (the currency of Ven.) to dollars.  And I'm really not exaggerating when I say it was the best meal we had during our entire trip!

Fresh mussels, clams, shrimp and various other seafood sundries over pasta.  God, it was good...

We recreated Lady and The Tramp by splitting that plate of pasta and slurped up every last bite of seafood goodness.

We also took a day to snorkel with the sea turtles that live and nest in the area.  With this in mind, I now present to you all the dorkiest picture of me ever taken...

Look closely, do you see what takes this photo to a new level of silliness? That would be my socks.  Hey, it helps prevents blisters from the flippers but I still felt stupid.  And the t-shirt was because my poor, sunburned skin could just not take another moment of sun exposure.

As you can see, we did buy an underwater camera but the thing had clearly been sitting in the souvenir shop since about 1995 because when we developed the photos upon our return, they were pretty much all blank, due to sun exposure of the film.  Sadness (and a waste of 20 bucks!) So I have no photos to show you all of the sea turtles but trust me, they were frickin' awesome.

We also saw a sting ray at the end of our day of snorkeling, right on the shore line, while we were taking a break.  I'm quite glad it happened with about only an hour left of beach time because neither one of us wanted to go back in the water after that.  For those that don't know, sting rays can really, really hurt ya if you step on one, not something we wanted to experience on our honeymoon!

And because I just can't help myself and am apparently incapable of writing a honeymoon post without a sunset photo or two (or twelve,) here's a series from our last night in Los Roques (tear.)

Our stay in Los Roques was really perfect.  Delicious food, lots of relaxing beach time with cool activities interspersed, and we didn't have to worry about or plan a thing, our posada took care of everything.  Los Roques is an awesome honeymoon destination and I highly recommend it for a couple looking to break out of the all-inclusive Carribbean resort mold!

Up next, we fly in an even smaller plane (betcha didn't think that was possible after our first one, right?) hike behind a waterfall and sleep in the jungle in a hammock.  Oh yes, the chill part of our honeymoon was done and it was time for some adventures!