What's black and purple and spiked all over?

After yesterday's excitement we were looking forward to a nice uneventful day. There was a short but considerable downpour in the morning so we went on a trek for our daily provisions of water, juice, salami, bread and doritos. This time we splurged on peanut butter and crackers for breakfast. Afterwards we negotiated a ride out to Playa Fronton for an exorbant amount of Dominican pesos. This would be our first ride in Caribbean waters and the scenery was more breathtaking than all the brochures and websites we'd seen. Pictures really didn't do it justice. We rode past huge cliffs with scattered palms and caves. Around a corner the water turned from tidy bowl blue to emerald green and the cliffs opened up to a stretch of sandy beach. There were about 5 other people and a family locals dotted amongst the palms. We walked to the end and jumped over some rocks to find a secluded area that we called home for the day. A little nap here, lunch there, hmm..Steve's looking red again. As we were having fun with the pagers Steve frolicks in the water and says he found something sharp with his foot. Turns out he stepped on a sea urchin. So we spent the next 20 minutes trying to pry the spines out of his left big toe. The very same big toe that did not get along with the pavement in St. Thomas and ended up losing a chunk of skin a few days earlier. He had a good dozen jabbed into his skin and I sat there with the sharpest object we had, a plastic knife, trying to free the spines from the prison that was Steve's foot. It really didn't work, but it did give him an opportunity to practice his zen of accepting pain. In the end he just had to suck it up, not literally cause you bet there'd be pictures of that, and deal with the discomfort. If his foot turns green and he starts seeing purple spots then we'll deal with that.