Snorkelling

We didn't have anything else planned for the rest of the day, so decided to spend some time soaking up the sun. Had to build a tan, otherwise who would believe that we'd been on holiday right?!! Anyway, after an hour and a half of lying in the sun, I'd had enough and decided that we could get a kayak from the hotel and go snorkelling instead. We go back round to the hut and got a couple of paddles, a life-jacket for me and dragged the kayak out into sea.

It's hard-going for a while for Rod - he couldn't figure out the paddles. Obviously the 'mechanism' of operating manual paddles is very complicated. I had to tell him to turn the paddles in a figure 8, rather than straight left-right-left motion. Eventually he gets it and we start moving around faster. I'm navigating in front - and I'm sure a lot of people in the other OWBs got woken up from their afternoon naps with "Right! Right! Right"...and "Left! Left! Left!"...and "Right! Left! Right! Left!"

When we paddled past our neighbouring OWB, I craned my neck to see if there was any 'action' going on in there. The couple next door seemed to be having a LOT of 'fun' the night before, we heard the girl's enthusiasm even over the TV set! She was either faking it, or he must have had some 'good lovin' lessons...urgh! Of course Rod is whispering at me furiously, telling me not to be so nosy. Well, if they are going to leave their sliding door to the deck open, then don't blame me if I 'happen' to wander by and look in!!!

We eventually navigate round to where there were a couple of boats who have obviously anchored to allow people to snorkel coz there were a lot of bright orange jackets bobbing about. We try to paddle over, but have a fear of hitting someone on the head with either a paddle or the boat, so we tried to keep our distance. We also got chunks of bread from the basket, but no fish were coming near us. So we tried paddling closer, but nearly hit a snorkeller...and then I realised that even if we were near the snorkellers, we can't both snorkel at the same time, coz who's going to hold on to the kayak? And even if both of us got out and one of us holds on to the kayak, how the hell would we get back in??? Eventually, we just gave up and paddled back to return the kayak to the guy. Saw a total of ZERO fish on our kayak snorkelling trip.

But all is not lost! I kept the life-jacket and we went back to our OWB to snorkel off the platform at the side. That's me in my life jacket...We had chunks of bread left, although it's all soggy by now and it's kind of white mush. Rod sat on the kayak to stop it from floating away - although it wasn't until a day later that we saw what another couple had done. They rent the kayak, paddle it round to their OWB, and then tie it onto the railing so that they could use it whenever they want. Selfish bastards...we should have thought of that too!

There are two main clumps of coral near our OWB - obviously man-made. We could still see the steel wire-frames on the newer corals. Each clump of coral had their own species. On the side facing the open waters, there were a lof of black & white striped fishes, a huge school of long thin fish (like chopsticks), a few schools of boring-looking grey fish and a few of the fish in 'Finding Nemo'. The one in the fish bowl with a scar that tries to bust them all out of the dentist's office. On the other side of the OWB, which is facing our noisy neighbours, this other clump of coral attracted a lot of brigh blue fish, some grey fish and some orange fish. What the hotel should provide really, is a kind of chart so that we could identify what we saw. Over the few days, we actually saw about 15 to 20 different species of fish. There's even a particular orange species that are nocturnal, coz we only saw them in the evenings and at night. But they are no where to be found during the day.