November 14 – Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park

We are both feeling somewhat better today.  Still coughing way too much but generally feel reasonable.  That is good because we have a nice excursion scheduled for today.  We had an early morning pick up and a packed breakfast and headed directly to the Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park...

for a boat ride out to Red Skin Island. 

There are two islands available for visiting, Red Skin Island and Jolly Bouy Island.  Both are located in a large coral reef area, the second largest coral reef in the world after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.  Each island is open only six months of the year (they alternate) in order to limit exposure to over tourism.

Once we arrived at the island, we transferred to a glass bottom boat for an hour and a half glass bottom boat ride.  There were lots of fish and coral to see and unfortunately a fair amount of dead coral.  This reef is also suffering from climate change and over tourism.

Maroon Clown Fish and Unknown Blue Fish

Zebra Fish

Table Coral

Clams embedded in coral

Blue Starfish

Sea Cucumber

After the ride they dropped us off on the island itself…unfortunately we didn’t realize it would be a wet landing.  Oh well.

There wasn’t a lot to see there.  We wandered down to the beach for a few views...

and took a short hike on part of the trail.  

A Tiny Crustacean 

It was way too hot and steamy to do the entire trail.  Then back to the beach to rest and visit with a few people.

The tour guide apparently spoke no English as his entire presentation on the ferry and then the glass bottom boat was in Hindi.  But other guest filled us in on some of the key points.  We very much enjoyed the day. 

We were back in the room by early afternoon but opted to skip lunch and just rest.  The coughing continues.