This morning we left our protected anchorage in Emerald Bay to begin our adventure exploring more of the islands in the Bahamas. We headed north to protect ourselves from the winter winds and used our morning cruise to enjoy the blue waters and scenery.

By mid-morning we had arrived in a beautiful anchorage that we used as our home base to explore some of the smaller islands and coves around us. We took a dip in one of the amazing Blue Holes of the Bahamas on Norman’s Pond Cay, tying together what we learned the previous evening during a presentation from our Cultural Specialist, Fabio Amador, about how all these tunnels and cave systems exist in this area of the world.

We also scooted over to a tiny island called Leaf Cay, and enjoyed an enthusiastic welcome from the endemic Northern Rock Iguanas that call this little piece of paradise their home. We shared the beach with the iguanas and took a nice relaxing swim to cool off before returning to National Geographic Sea Lion.

In the afternoon everyone got out their snorkel gear and we got our first look under the waves of the Bahamas! Beautiful fish were darting all about the patch reefs that we explored as we swam and drifted our way back to shore. It was a lovely day of exploration!