Today we did two things we missed when we passed through this area two months ago. Above is Thunderball Cave, where scenes from the James Bond movie Thunderball and the Darryl Hannah/Tom Hanks movie Splash were shot.
On our way to the cave, we stopped at a beach where there are swimming pigs. These pigs were left on the island by Staniel Cay residents. That seems like a strange thing to do. The pigs swim out to us looking for treats. We didn’t have any food so when we started to leave, the pigs walked back to the shore. After snorkeling, we stopped back again and this time there was a mother pig with five little piglets. JoAnne and Bill had some pretzels which they fed the sow. They also gave some food to the piglets who stayed on the beach. After the food was gone the sow went over to her piglets. One was a runt and she picked him up, threw him in the water and was obviously trying to kill him as she was stepping on him, holding him under water. We ran up to them and splashed water on the sow. The runt got away, stumbled up on the beach and headed towards the woods, hiding behind a rock. It was a very sad thing to watch, but something that is a factor in the wild....survival of the fittest. She either wanted the food for herself or her larger piglets.
We went to Thunderball Cave at slack tide which is the desirable time to go. It was incredible. We had gone to a similar cave called Rocky Dundas at Pipe Cay exactly two months ago in January. That cave was also phenomenal, but in a different way. There is a great deal of plant life on the coral inside Rocky Dundas.
Thunderball Cave had many fish in it and they literally swarmed around us as we snorkeled but not much plant life. We had the cave to ourselves for about 10-15 minutes and then four or five other dighies and large tenders came to the cave.
For more photos of snorkeling in Thunderball Cave, click here.