So far our time in Staniel Cay had been spent with me balancing work and getting boat/life tasks done. With Christmas approaching the work chatter was getting lighter so I took the afternoon off to go have some fun. David located a couple of plane wrecks that we could snorkel and we planned a trip to the Thunderball grotto.
Both of the wrecks were in less than 6 foot of water. Both wrecks are located off Staniel Cay. One of the wrecks is a drug smugglers plan that ditched here during the Pablo Escobar drug running empire days back in the 70’s.
The story of the goes that a man called in on the radio line requesting help finding a dimly lit landing strip. Apparently back then they would use vehicles with their lights on to lite the runway. As the minutes passed, his voice got more urgent and he began speaking Spanish and less in English , saying he was running low on fuel.
As soon as the officials got the landing strip lite with car vehicles, the radio on the other end went silent. Officials feared it had run out of fuel before he could safely land.
In the morning the search party finally found the plane about ten miles off of Normans Cay, sunken with the two passengers still on board.
It turns out , it would have been impossible for them to escape the plane due to the space being packed with Marijuana. They are believed to have been drug runners from Colombia who made frequent stops on their routes to South America to Miami with illegal drugs.
We planned the airplanes first while we waited for low tide to enter the grotto.
The grotto is an underwater cave system made from limestonethat is like a fish aquarium when you get inside. It is a tourist location so it gets a little crowded on the inside.
Thunderball grotto got it’s name from the ever popular James Bond cinema series in the 1963 film Thunderball. It appeared again in a scene in the James Bond film Never Say Never.
Spotted this guy hanging out under the ledge as we made our way around to the main entrance of the grotto. One of the many nurse sharks in this vicinity of the marina. You can see several nurse sharks hanging out at the marina in front of the cleaning station the fisherman use to clean their catch. The nurse sharks know if they hang out long enough they will get fed.