There is a small island just off of Staniel Cay in the Bahamas, and it's hollow. From the outside it looks like any other island however at the base of the island where the limestone meets the crystal clear waters there is a small cave. Only noticeable at low tide, this cave is the entrance to Thunderball Grotto. Thunderball Grotto was made famous by the James Bond movie "Thunderball" and has also been featured in many other movies such as "Into The Blue" which stars Paul Walker and Jessica Alba [basically my life in my dreams]. Marshall and I arrived by dingy to the base of the grotto, beyond excited from all we had heard about it. We got our fins and masks organized, put them on, and dove into the water. Outside the cave is just shallow grass beds where we could see conchs and starfish scattered about and a few sea turtles, rays, and a large barracuda cruising in the distance. At the entrance to the grotto, however, beautiful coral flourishes and hundreds and hundreds of fish swarm in schools in and out of the many mouths of the cave. As we swam up to the entrance we could see a couple other entrances to the cave that we're only accessible from underwater [which were me and marsh's ish... we always loved finding small caves and tunnels in the coral to freedive through, Thunderball had many]. As we entered the Grotto the ceiling was very low and the limestone stalactites were pretty sharp so we dove through underwater, the view was indescribable, but after about 10 ft the ceiling opened up above our heads into a massive cavern or grotto with a 30 ft high ceiling littered with skylights. The sunlight poured through the skylights making the water a very surreal electric blue, and the contrast of the diffused color of the coral and the fish in this blue was absolutely beautiful. We spent hours upon hours exploring the grotto, there wasn't a corner we didn't touch.
I would have given anything to have had a underwater housing for my camera with me, here are my fisheye pics
Besides swimming and free diving around the Grotto me and Marshall heard from a lot of other cruisers and also in the bar on Staniel Cay that you can climb to the top of the Grotto and jump through one of the small skylights 35ft down into the water. We had to try, and try we did. to be continued....
