A post by Julie
After leaving Vista Mar, we headed to Benao, a little surfer village recommended by our friends on Sago. We were surprised to be the only sailboat there. We were planning on surfing for a day or two and then moving on (but stayed over a week because we were having so much fun). The first night we arrived, everyone was settling down for the night, playing a game, and I was getting water to clean our dinner dishes. The bioluminescence was absolutely amazing. Looking down into the water was like a reflection of the sky—there were little bits of sparkling blue as far down as you could see. If you splashed the water, you created a tremendous sparkly blue wave. You could see the fish darting around well under water, trailing blue streaks behind them, and blue bubbles rising above them. Incredible!
We decided we needed to swim in this blue light up sea. When we jumped in, it looked like someone turned on a big blue/green light underwater. We got out the kayak, cannonballed off the back of the boat, dove off the back of the boat, and played games trying to see who could make the largest and longest wave of blue light up magnificence. It was so cool!
Later that night, I heard tapping on the hull. Then, I started hearing blowing noises. I went out to investigate and found a pod of dolphins happily playing in the small wake of our boat (caused by the wind, waves and current). They were playing just like we had earlier. I went back in and woke up Mark to come watch the dolphin gymnastics in a sparkly blue ocean. They were zipping all around our boat, then a lone dolphin swam quickly from behind the boat, seemingly charging us on the sugar scoop and then disappeared under our boat with a trail of blue bubbles. Dolphins are always fun to watch and make us happy. Blue sparkly water dolphins are magic!
The bioluminescent bay stayed with us for our visit to Benao, but the first night was by far the best. This will be definitely be one of the ‘remember when’ moments from this adventure!