{"id":23758,"date":"2015-09-20T12:48:03","date_gmt":"2015-09-20T16:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/?p=23758"},"modified":"2015-09-20T12:48:03","modified_gmt":"2015-09-20T16:48:03","slug":"an-adventure-in-paradise-with-captiva-cruises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/20\/an-adventure-in-paradise-with-captiva-cruises\/","title":{"rendered":"An Adventure In Paradise with Captiva Cruises"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"seashells<\/a><\/p>\n

We had quite an adventure on our iLoveShelling trip<\/strong><\/a><\/span> to Cayo Costa on Friday.\u00a0The morning started out with rain but our die hard group of shellers\u00a0waited it out until our\u00a0Captiva Cruises<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>captains Jorge and Carlos made sure we could make it safely to the island.<\/p>\n

\"boarding<\/a><\/p>\n

We ended up going to the north side of Cayo Costa to dock at the ranger station (which is not the usual place we go for the iLoveShelling trips). The we hopped aboard the “shell shuttle” (they really don’t call it that- I kinda just made that up. But hmmm.. but they should, right?) to take us to the beach and back.<\/p>\n

\"riding<\/a>
\nIt turned out to be a beautiful day and the beach was loaded with dried washed up SEA URCHINS.<\/p>\n

\"sea<\/a><\/p>\n

They were everywhere.<\/p>\n

\"seaweed<\/a><\/p>\n

The colors were abshellutely gorgeous with green, pink, purple, beige and lavender.<\/p>\n

\"sea<\/a><\/p>\n

It was so much fun seeing Martha again from our July trip (CLICK HERE<\/strong><\/span><\/a>) and she told me she was still looking for a BABYS EAR. There were quite a few people on the last trip that found them but she wasnt one of the lucky ones. So on the boat ride over to the island this time, I told her\u00a0the north side of the island wasn’t normally the place to look for them so she probably wouldn’t find one. Well she proved me wrong! haha As soon as we got to the beach, there was a BABYS EAR sitting right in the middle wrack line. Omigosh! And then Martha found another one. It goes to show you… don’t ever think that you can outwit Mother Nature. Congrats Martha!<\/p>\n

\"martha<\/a><\/p>\n

Ron and Rene from PA had some shelltastic luck with finding not just URCHINS, but so many OLIVES too.<\/p>\n

\"collecting<\/a><\/p>\n

But I think Rene’s fave was that sweet double SUNRAY VENUS.<\/p>\n

\"seashells<\/a><\/p>\n

Jay and Jane from Georgia found all sorts of cool shell loot. Look at Jane… she can’t take her eyes off such fun finds. heehee<\/p>\n

\"finding<\/a><\/p>\n

Tim and Fran (Ohio) found a few faves but check out the size of Fran’s huge SHARKS EYE.\u00a0Y’all are so much fun! Oh and sorry again Fran for throwing you under the bus- haha.<\/p>\n

\"finding<\/a><\/p>\n

John and Dee from Illinois along with Bart and Laurie from Pennsylvania found a few keepers but I think their faves were the SAND DOLLARS- look at those smiles. Dee, it was such a pleasure to talk with you and meet you. You are soooo dear!<\/p>\n

\"happy<\/a><\/p>\n

Cuties Julie and Ron from California found a few treasures too. It’s always so much fun to hang out on the boat and to see who found what- shell ‘n tell!<\/p>\n

\"shelling<\/a><\/p>\n

I think Terry and Michelle from Arkansas were as obsessed at seeing so many SEA URCHINS as I was. Michelle and I kept saying \u00a0“… and theres another one! … and look at that color!”.<\/p>\n

\"shelling<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see, some of them still had some of their spines but the insides were completely empty. It was fun to see them in so many different variations.<\/p>\n

\"sea<\/a><\/p>\n

Meet Jochen, Katja and their son Benedikt. They have fantastic sheller eyes especially for visiting from Germany since they are the ones that\u00a0found the shells on the purple tray in the top photo. Way to go!<\/p>\n

\"family<\/a><\/p>\n

You have to meet Jessica and Trudy from Ontario Canada. Jessica scored the one thing she wanted find on our trip- a SAND DOLLAR. What I found out is that she is an artist and she makes SAND DOLLARS… out of dough. She is a master confectioner and she brought me some of her cookies!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sweet<\/a><\/p>\n

OMG they are yummy and sooooo beautiful. Here’s a photo she took of\u00a0the amazing sealife cookies on Instagram since they didn’t last\u00a0long enough for me to take a photo of them … Clark and I devoured them. Thank you Jessica!<\/p>\n

\"seashell<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was an amazing, adventurous day with such fun shellers!<\/p>\n

\"number<\/a><\/p>\n

And… as with all iLoveShelling cruises<\/strong><\/a><\/span>,\u00a0Congress Jewelers (Sealife By Congress)\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>gave everybody a $25 gift certificate to use in their store- they are so generous to the shelling community!<\/p>\n

\"Sealife<\/a><\/p>\n

An adventure in paradise- It was surely a day to remember!<\/p>\n

\"beach<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had quite an adventure on our iLoveShelling trip to Cayo Costa on Friday.\u00a0The morning started out with rain but our die hard group of shellers\u00a0waited it out until our\u00a0Captiva Cruises\u00a0captains Jorge and Carlos made sure we could make it safely to the island. We ended up going to the north side of Cayo Costa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[144,3,116,142,1398,49,79,1450],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-babys-ear","category-captiva","category-captiva-cruises","category-cayo-costa-beachcombing","category-purple-sea-urchin","category-urchin","category-seashells","category-west-indian-sea-egg","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Nubb-6bc","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23781,"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23758\/revisions\/23781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}