November 1 – 9, 2013
These days it was getting light so early. The photos below were taken of the pre-dawn light at 4:45am. It’s no wonder we were up by 6am every day.
While the demise of our Bula net had signaled the end of the season, our net was having a brief resurgence as a few people we knew were headed to New Zealand and using it to compare notes. Being here at Leleuvia with good internet, we could share what we were seeing in the weather forecast.
One morning we listened while everyone reported their conditions, and the seas were quite rough and unpleasant. When it was our turn to report our conditions, Rich said we now have a 2mm swell but just got hit by a 4mm swell when a girl in a bikini dropped her Mai Tai in the water. There was a moment of dead silence before someone said, “Bastard!” It was pretty funny, at least to us. Of course our turn to be out there was coming, but not for a couple of weeks at least.
Meanwhile, while our friends had left, we found we had some new ones. I discovered a friendly spade fish living under our boat after I tossed a mango seed over the side and he came up to check it out. The poor fish was so disappointed that I decided to appease him with some crackers. That went over well, and more spade fish appeared for the feast. We also had eleven little squid living under our boat, very cute!
Of course we were enjoying the snorkeling and found some excellent spots. We found an especially nice drift snorkel on the north side of the island, but all of it was good. Below a map with our favorite spots.
*The light green light green line indicates the north reef where we were able to drift snorkel.
*The blue-green line approximates the marine reserve.
*The blue line shows a nice snorkeling area.
(Note: I must add that Leleuvia was directly in the path of 2015’s Cyclone Winston, a category 5; so I don’t know if the snorkeling’s still good. Cyclones, unfortunately, can smash a reef to bits, leaving nothing but devastation. Coral does grow back and fish return, but it takes awhile.)
We did bring our underwater camera along on a couple of our snorkels, so here’s a brief montage of some of the stuff we saw.
When we weren’t staying cool by snorkeling, we’d use something called Chilly Pads: rubber pads that can be drenched in water and then dropped over bare skin to cool oneself off. We hadn’t used them since Samoa in 2012, but I was glad to have them now. When they’re wet, they are soft and pliable, but when dry they become stiff and leathery.
On night Rich woke me up urgently saying he had to turn on the light! It seemed a dry chilly pad fell on him and he thought he was being attacked by a large winged creature. Of course I thought this was pretty funny, but later karma caught up with me when we had a sudden heavy downpour and all our hatches were open. I had to run around trying to get them closed and got drenched when I had trouble getting a clip-on fan off the open forward hatch, getting drenched before I could remove it and get the hatch closed. It was Rich’s turn to laugh, and I’m sure our friends underway to New Zealand would have been very amused at both our evening’s misfortunes. –Cyndi
