This morning I lead a trip down to Crystal River to do some snorkeling with the manatees. Let me start off by saying I wasn't exactly thrilled to do this, first off, it's cold, secondly, 6:30 is way too early for me, but I'm not teaching this month so I bit the bullet and did it anyway. So we rallied at the shop and headed down south, after a few wrong turns ("fearless leader" is a nice way of saying "bad with directions") we made it to Birds Underwater just in time. We watched the video, loaded up and headed out toward King's Spring, however due to the other traffic headed that way we went to Gator Hole instead. We slipped into the water and were pleasantly surprised to find a dozen or so very "friendly" manatees (we all decided that if anyone was getting molested it was us). I started out just hanging around watching my group, when I felt this pudgy nudge and looked down to find myself nose-to-nose with a manatee, so I obliged him or her and started scratching, which he or she responded to by pawing my arm, directing me a little lower on the tummy and it seems like everyone else had the same experience, instead of having to approach the manatees, they swam full speed (you can imagine full speed for a 500 lb. mass of fat is not that fast) at us, at times making people sandwiches out of us. Overall it was a surreal experience, I'd often look into thier eyes and wonder what they are thinking and get the feeling they were doing the very same thing. In the end, I'm glad I got to go, it was worth the cold and the dark early morn to go toe-to-toe with some cash... er... sea cows. 
Ben
Ben
