Adios Roques and hallo Aves!!

Cayo de Agua is part of a little archipelago consisting of four islands along with many reefs, beautiful beaches, great snorkeling and excellent fishing. It is a delightful island with tall sand dunes, a palm grove, mangrove trees, lagoons and water holes. Walking along the mile long beach was beautiful and hiking up the dune trail to a lonely palm tree very painful as under the sand lots of burrs were hidden and buried them selves into our feet. Further down the beach we ventured inland this time with our crocks on and did find all the holes dug into the ground where the Amerindians got their fresh water. Still some of the holes bring up fresh water to this day. A bit further along the beach a sand spit connects Cayo Agua with West Cay which has one of the prettiest beaches I've ever seen including a lighthouse. You cant' take your eyes away from the contrast of the white sand and turquoise color of the water. In the afternoon we ventured out to the near by reef to snorkel and as we were getting ready in the dingy we noticed lots of black and blue tails surfacing on top of the reef, same as we saw in Tortuga island. As soon as we were in the water we snorkeled towards that part of the reef and were amazed to encounter about 30 parrot fish, most of them were black with cobalt blue heads but the amazing thing was their size, we have never seen parrot fish so huge 20 to 30 pounds and where is the camera when you need it. We had a great time. Since bad weather was on its way, 25 to 30 knots of wind we departed Los Roques with a bit of disappointment that we were not able to stay longer. The sail was lumpy bumpy to Aves de Barlavento but luckily only 30 miles. The wind blew anywhere from 12 to gusting 20 knots but the waves were what made it so uncomfortable. There is no swell action here just unorganized waves that pop up like wild peaks everywhere and mostly only 5 feet apart. They were up to 8 feet in heights. The waves turned us in any which way and the jib even managed to get wrapped around the stay. Took us a while to get it unfurled, pulled in and the staysail let out. The sky was overcast and we were worried not to be able to see the many reefs to get into the anchorage. But imagine that just as we arrived at the southern tip of the island the sun burned off all the clouds and all the blue colors of the water began to sparkle. When we rounded the corner to the Leeward side the water changed to an incredible cobalt blue and we followed the darker shades to our anchorage which was around 40 to 50 feet and winding its way through many very shallow reefs. We dropped anchor in front of the middle anchorage where high mangroves tower along the island where red footed boobies nest. The view is spectacular seeing the green mangroves, the light turquoise green water around our boat and about 100 yards in front of us just beyond a shallow reef a huge pond of cobalt blue water reaching to the outer reef. Isla de Aves are two separate little island archipelagos, separated by about 10 miles of deep water. The name was given due to the large number of birds that make them their home. The birds live in the dense mangroves on the larger island we are anchored in front. Barlavento has a horseshoe reef protecting the two islands and snorkeling and fishing we heard is excellent here. According to the weather we'll be here for a while.