October 31, 2012
While anchorage #16 was more than pretty enough to warrant its popularity, the main reason people go there is its proximity to the Coral Gardens, one of the top snorkeling spots in Tonga and rated one of the top five in the world (I don’t know by whom).
The Coral Gardens isn’t necessarily easy to get to. There is an underwater coral shelf between the two long thin islands that make up the “C.” The snorkeling area is on the outside of the C, and you have to swim over the coral shelf to get there. The problem is this shelf creates waves, which generally aren’t that big, but they can be hard to swim through if the seas are up.
Aside from calm seas, you need good light or the colors won’t be as bright as they can be. And you need a high tide so there is some room between you and the sharp coral shelf when the waves wash over. This high tide needs to occur when it’s light enough to make for good snorkeling—high tide at 6am and 6pm doesn’t do you any good. With all this, there are a lot of people who’ve been to #16 who never made it to the Coral Gardens.
From our boat, the back side of the C was a good dinghy ride away, probably ½ mile. The seas were relatively calm, the tide almost at its highest point, and the morning sun was up amid a few clouds. There’s a small bay and beach right next to the shelf where you can put your dinghy but we opted to anchor ours just off the beach.
From there, we made our way to the opening between the islands and watched the waves, waiting for a set to finish. When it did, we swam as fast as we could, ducking under waves as they came over us. They weren’t very big, but we had to put a lot of effort into getting through them.
When we finally made it over the shelf and past the waves, we were rewarded with a beautiful sunlit wonderland full of coral and fish. I haven’t snorkeled in enough areas to know whether it belongs in the top five in the world, but it looked pretty amazing. -Cyndi
The beach where we anchored our dingy with the coral gardens just beyond.
While there were a lot of fish, the diverse coral was the highlight.
There were wonderful “valleys” to swim through.
Splashes of colors.
And such diverse corals!
Rich using Scoobydoo – our underwater scooter. (More on that later.)
