Jacques Cousteau once called the underwater environment “le monde du silence,” the silent world. Apparently, he’d yet to snorkel a few feet away from a hungry green sea turtle chomping its way through a meadow of sea grass. On the gently sloping bottom in front of Baradel, one of the idyllic Tobago Cays, a lush green of the aptly named turtle grass spreads out like an underwater field of dreams. The government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines made this section of the Tobago Cays marine sanctuary a no-anchor zone. Where once cruisers’ Danforths plowed the bottom into lifeless furrows, the unmolested grass now grows like, well, weeds – and the shell games go on.
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Bobbing above a sea turtle offers one of the most relaxing snorkeling encounters to be had. In a sea of eat-or-be-eaten paranoia, turtles exude a calm that comes only from being practically tooth-proof. They pose on the bottom and do slow push-ups with their flippers as they graze, every so often remembering that they need air and lazily flapping to the surface. If you’re in the right spot and remain motionless, you’ll often come eye to eye with one and witness the slow dawning come over your new friend that … you’re … not … another … turtle, and it will leisurely spin away, Zen on the half shell.
Baradel exists as just one star in the stellar collection of islands known as the Tobago Cays, which in turn are but one constellation in what’s universally considered among the very best cruising grounds, the Grenadines. The Cays – Petit Rameau, Petit Bateau, Jamesby, Petit Tabac and Baradel – remain uninhabited, a national park so elemental that Petit Tabac was the island where Johnny Depp’s Capt. Jack Sparrow suffered a marooning with Keira Knightley. And while other Grenadines offer their own excellent underwater sites, it’s only in the Cays that you can create a perfect snorkeler’s day by combining a calm, crunchy commune among the turtles, stingrays and eagle rays of Baradel with a ramble amid the riot of life on display atop Horseshoe Reef, the coral bulwark that arcs around the Cays. Add surface idylls on fantasy beaches and a day-topping sunset barbecue of fresh lobster prepared on the sand by a local fisherman, and you’re living in le monde du magnifique.
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