swimming with turtles from beach

[georgied]

Last year I read post that said there is a beach where you can just swim up from the beach to a place where there are lots of turtles, usually they will bring an excursion there and I guess the turtles are waiting but you can also do this on your own. Does anybody know which beach this is?

thanks!

[Hurry&Wait]

Paynes Bay

 

Here is a link and a link within which explains others experiences:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1293227

 

I have done it myself as I hate tours. My wife and I really enjoyed seeing the turtles. I grew up swimming in the ocean and had no problems. However, I would not do it if I were not familiar with ocean swimming with the understanding that you are swimming around boats whom may not see you without a dive flag.

[dayne]

We took a taxi there last year. The beach is pretty but we walked through a cloud of Marijuana (taxi drivers waiting) to get on and off the beach then I was told that I could not swim out to the area where the turtles are. He said it was against the rules, that you had to take a boat out there for safety reasons (obviously that was a lie) he wanted like ten bucks to drop me off in the water and it is close enough that you can swim out to it. No else was doing it so I believed it. Then we had very "shady" subjects (look like homeless drug abusers that were shaking and had sores all over) walking back and forth and hoovering around our stuff when we went for a walk on the beach..I was very uncomfortable..which I hated because I loved the beach and the view. We left after only a couple of hours due to the unsafe atmosphere and a violent vendor that we had to call the police on. It was awful. We are going again this year but not to turtle beach. I would take a tour to this area if you really want to see the turtles..then leave instead of staying on the beach.

[georgied]

is turtle beach the same as Paynes bay?