The next day we boarded the boat at 7:30 am for an overnight excursion out on the reef. The skipper of the ship was Claire, a forty something mother of two girls and with her husband the owner of the boat and the company. She and her husband run three two-day trips per week and do maintenance and books on their day off. Sounds like running your own business is a dream job. Claire made it seem that way because she had great energy and passion for sharing the reef with us. The first mate's name was Mike, who is a Kiwi, so his name is more like Myaik. Last but not least was Carla, the general jack of all trades and odd jobs. She's a Spaniard but she came to this area for the diving. The ship's cargo included two Aussies, four Germans, Brian, Mim and me, two other Americans, and one Colombian.
Four hours after leaving the dock, we were at our little blue paradise. We all got our snorkels out and the do's and donts were explained and off into the water we jumped. Okay, I'm going to tell you up front that I'm just throwing-in the towel on trying to relate this experience. It would take a great writer a very long time to describe an experience on the reef and I'm not a great writer and I don't have a lot of time. I will try and provide a glimpse of the experience and hopefully all these underwater photos, thanks to Brian, will help.
All I can say is that it was truly an experience that I will never forget. I'm sure this experience has change lives and helped many people to understand their place in the world. It's really like visiting another planet.
I had a lot of difficulty with my mask leaking. My facial hair was making it impossible for the mask to create a seal around my skin. I would put on my mask and the then begin to snorkel and immediately water would begin to seep in and eventually make its way up my nose. It was impossible to go for more than three to five minutes before I would have to roll over on my back and clear my mask and my nose. Sometimes after clearing my mask, I would just lie back and float and relax there in the water. Then I'd roll over and the reef would come rushing at me and I couldn't focus on one thing. The amount of fish coming at me and going away and the coral beaming and the plants swaying was overwhelming and I'd have to calm myself down and force myself to slow down and spend a little more time with the coral or with a particular fish.
At one point I was snorkeling on the edge of a reef canyon and I noticed a Green Turtle swimming about fifteen feet below me. I looked around and found Brian. I told him about the turtle and he followed me as I was following the turtle. After a bit I turned over and looked back at Brian and he asked "did you see it" and I said "yeah, didn't you" and he said "no, did you see the shark", I said "no, where was it" he said " right under you the whole time". I quickly stuck my mask back on and dipped in the water and sure enough there was an five foot White-tipped Reef Shark swimming along the edge of the reef. I was amazed that I didn't feel nervous at all.
We moved to few different locations and the snorkeling got even more amazing. Vast gardens of coral where the water was only three feet deep. Incredible that we could be fours hours off the coast and be in three feet of water. It was so so so, something, incredible, amazing, mind-blowing, all these seem to fall short of the mark when trying to describe what it was like. A huge parrot fish just inches away, a giant sea clam which changed from blue to neon orange depending on the angle you looked at it, a huge sea cucumber, numerous species of angel and butterfly fish, huge schools of fish, sharks, turtles, soft corals swaying with the currents, a hundred shades of each color of the rainbow illuminated right there before me.
As the sun set Mim, Brian, and I chatted with the rest of the group and had dinner. The boat was much smaller than I imagined. This became most apparent when it came time to bed down for the night. There were four of us sharing a cabin. Calling it a cabin is really generous. I was more like a walk-in closet. It was pretty stuffy down below deck and the fans in our closet didn't work. So you get the picture, it was a restless night.
The next morning we snorkeled a part of the reef they call The Three Sisters. The Sisters are three giant towers of coral that rise up from the depths of the ocean floor. Swimming over to them I saw nothing but endless blue water and then I was there before a huge tower of coral with huge schools of fish of various species. The fish here were bigger than at the other locations and the schools were more numerous.
After spending several hours snorkeling around the Sisters, it was time to head back to dry land. The four hour slog back to the dock was long and a little too hot. But it was well worth it. What an amazing experience!
The pictures came out really great!
ReplyDeleteYes they did and it wasn't easy. Brian had pretty much the same issue as me. So to do that underwater photography and deal with water up the nose is not easy.
ReplyDelete