Glowing (233/366)

(234/366)

Tonight we finally got our night kayaking in. The weather looked a bit threatening before we even left our condos (think giant claps of thunder, rain, and possibly lightning), but we decided to risk it and hope for the best.

Well, the best is what we got. Not only is the place significantly closer than the our first try, but the whole experience was out of this world. We all sat two to a kayak. Apparently I was the power-kayaker (what?) so I got to sit in the back.

Rosanna shared the kayak and we had a blast. When we first got in the water, it was looking a little threatening towards where we were headed. So we all hung around the inlet we took off from and listened the the frogs croak and looked for manatees. And we found them!

See that blob in the water? It’s a manatee! They would swim right up near our boats. If you splash the water a bit, it let’s them know you are there without frightening them. It was so cool seeing them up close. Also, manatees are pretty gnarly looking animals. We did a bit of manatee spotting while we waited for the storm to pass. Once it looked like it was going to miss us, we headed out into the open water.

As we paddled our way out, the sky in the distance looked pretty scary. Flashes of lightning lit up the sky over and over again. We joked about how we were heading out into a giant body of water in the middle of the lightning storm. Only, we were only sort of joking. We managed to avoid all rain, storms, thunder, and lightning though. And as it got darker and darker, our trip got more and more awesome.

Turns out the water around here is bioluminescent. Which means, there’s stuff in the water that makes it glow. I took lots and lots of video and lots and lots of pictures and I all ended up with is a bunch of black squares and some black squares with my voice blabbing for 35 minutes.

I wish I had been able to capture it, but it was amazing! As you paddled, the water would glow this amazing green color. Fish were zipping through the water and you could follow their path because of the glow of the water. If you stuck your hand in the water, you could lift it out and watch it drip off with glowing droplets of water. Motion led to glowing. Even though our arms felt like they were going to fall off, each paddle was so cool. Watching the water splash and glow was unbelievable right up to the end of the trip. SO AWESOME.