We're settled in at Warderick Wells Cay, the headquarters of the Exuma Land and Sea Park.  We'll stay almost a week because there's so much to see and do here, and because we'll have a few days of strong winds. 

After leaving Norman's Cay we anchored off Shroud Cay for a few days, exploring the mangrove creeks by dinghy and kayak.  One creek leads across the island to a windswept beach on the ocean side, and from there we took a short hike up to an overlook where we could see Norman's to the north and our boats at anchor to the southwest.  Shroud is home to a number of nesting long-tailed tropic birds this time of the year, and the sky was full of these dramatic fliers.  The water is such a bright turquoise color that it reflects off the bottom of the white birds.

The snorkeling has been quite good everywhere.  We just hop in our dinghies and go exploring - looking for black areas in the water that indicate coral patches, and heading to likely spots after studying the chart.  If a spot looks interesting, we just flop into the water and snorkel around until we've exhausted the terrain or we get cold.  The patches and reefs are full of grouper, snappers, and tons of little reef fish and juveniles.  Where the patches meet the sand we often see stingrays. 

We moved a few miles down to Hawksbill Cay and anchored off a beautiful little beach.  We hiked up to the limestone cairn at the top of the hill, and had a nice view of our dinghy on the beach, and the land and seascape.  It really is as remote as it looks here.

On Saturday we moved down to Warderick Wells where we are now.  We snorkeled until we were prunes to take advantage of the settled weather while it lasted, and we were rewarded with elkhorn coral, gorgonians, yellow and purple seafans, big lobsters just strolling out in the open, and tons of fish.  We even saw a group of six reef squid doing their strange "dance", as curious about us as we were about them.

Some of the smaller sea life are my favorites - the pretty little flamingo tongue snails...

...and the juvenile queen angelfish.