February 8,2014 Saturday Cayo Costa Island, Pelican Bay

Had a rocking night on the hook, finally calmed down around 4 am and fell asleep, woke up to fog again.  Decided to stay here another day and go over to the Island for a hike.  They said there were good walking trails thru a jungle type environment to the beach on the other side.  So we walked along the trails from 1:30 to 4:30, picked up some sea shells for our little girls and some sand so they can go digging for shells too.  Came back to the boat and mail lunch/super.  We were hungry after our long walk.  Fog had rolled in on the beach side as we were walking and not as much in the bay but was still foggy.  Cool breeze came with the fog and wind blowing but able to paddle our dingy back to our boat and over to BeachQuest for Happy hour and a good visit.  Boat rocking again tonight and swinging on the hook, Curt put the rudder down so our boat isn't going around in circles now.:)  Heading for Cape Coral and Ft Myers tomorrow providing the fog  doesn't get worse in the morning.  Field Trip and Beach Quest heading to Ft. Myers to reprovision before the trip to Marathon Cay. 

 Fog rolling in off and on all morning, our friends boats

 Looking to the south across the bay, quite a few boats have left this morning

 They tell us this is a very popular anchorage, some sailing groups come and just spend the weekend, have a bonfire on the beach at the little island behind the boat above.

 Walking thru the jungle type fauna with sea shells that make up the white path or trails

 It is said that there feral pigs on this island with alligators, and lots of little lizards

 The Mother-in_law tongue was growing wild, they were cutting big areas to try to control it

 This was following the Quarantine Trail to another side of the island, we missed the trail to the Lagoon where we were told Manatees hangout.  Neat shelling place further on down from the Quarantine Station

 Another side of the island, had these purple morning glorys and yellow daisy type flowers, strange for what we had seen so far on our walk

 Moved onto another side of the island where the fauna was changing

 Beach looking out on the Gulf, fog starting to roll in

 Decided to rest after our 3 mile hike and have our water and snack, people in a boat right off shore in front of caught what looked liked a small hammerhead shark, approx. 12 inches long.

 Sand was different here again, lots of seashells which we picked up and put in a bag with some of the sand for our grandkids

 We were sitting there and saw something jumping out of the water, it was stingrays, they had told us they were there the day before, someone had gotten stung.  We've never seen them fly out of the water like this

 Took the cemetery trail and found this small area, neat to see the Conch shells around their grave site in the middle of the island.

 White Egret along shore on the way back

 Looking at our boat from shore.  Fog moving in again for the night.