Saturday 24 May - a lovely snorkel on the reef

Commodore
May 25
3 min read

Updated: May 29

We woke up and decided an 8 hour gruelling walk in mud and rain was not for us! Shocked to see yet another cruise liner had come in this morning, we laughed to read that the maximum liners they get in a month to this island is 3, usually 2, and we managed to be here for all 3! Luckily the tourists don't seem to do much snorkelling, there was just one group out, so we had the place mainly to ourselves.

We headed out before having breakfast to catch the sunshine, the forecast was for rain and cloud later on. We treated ourselves to some nice new masks from a dive shop in Whangarei, we are very pleased with them and Rowan is in love with his new fins, all his old ones gave him blisters. It was lovely to see the coral in reasonable condition and recovering after typhoon damage. Sadly Rowan managed to take the wrong GoPro in the dinghy so we have no photos. There were large areas of blue spiky coral that was really impressive. We jumped in at three different spots and each area seemed to have something unique. The deeper area where we did a drift snorkel with the dinghy we saw lots of big fish plus a turtle ambling around. In the shallower spot we were going up a canyon, we must have frightened a turtle that could find no exit, so it came barrelling towards us at speed. They can move incredibly fast when they want to. We also saw a huge coral head covered in soft coral with loads of little clown fish all defending their own little patch. They are mesmerising to watch as they duck in and out of the coral tendrils facing up to us. We must be enormous to them, so they are either very brave or inquisitive. We also saw some lovely big clams with their juicy brightly coloured lips. It was a very successful snorkel in lovely clear water. I have fancy new ear plugs that worked a treat, thanks to Roy's recommendation, so very happy to be back in the water. We timed it just right, as we headed back to PolePole around midday the island was covered in rain and cloud, we definitely made the right decision about the walk.

I finally finished cleaning the last bit of the boat I had to do, which included a bit of a sort out, and of Rowan's desk! Things are looking a lot better. I feel good about moving on tomorrow with a clean boat. At least no more dead cockroach carcasses about!

Late afternoon we went into the village, it was surprisingly big, with a grid of streets. The gardens are so neat and lush with some wonderful heavily laden pamplemousse trees. These are the huge big grapefruits that we feasted on in French Polynesia. Everyone is so friendly, apparently they are the happiest country in the world. We soon found people willing to sell us pamplemousse, oranges, huge big pineapples and Island cabbage (a kind of spinach). We were laden down on our return to PolePole

We have our first Airbnb guests arriving at the house this week end, so Mettingham has also had a good tidy up! The bookings are slowly rolling in, the latest enquiry is a a Hollywood film crew who are coming to cover the music festival Latitude, which is down the road from us. Meanwhile I am still trying to buy a new Ride on Mower!