As mentioned earlier, the snorkeling on the reef is great. The four oldest Brown kids were in the water when I got down to the tree in front of the duplex which we used for access. They were making their way across the reef, which was painful in bare feet. I made my way uncomfortably across the reef to the kids. Kate wasn’t comfortable, so I took her in, finding a channel through the reef. In the meantime, Jeff was trying to walk his way in across the reef, and was stuck. Amie and I hollered at him to stay where he was, and I quickly made my way out past the reef and around to where he was standing, which fortunately was only a few feet in. I reached up for him and rolled him into deep water, and escorted him around to the tree. Then Chase, Krista, and I made our way back out to the reef for a very nice snorkel together.
The next afternoon Cindy agreed to try snorkeling with me. She very much wanted to, but greatly fears the water, so she got up her nerve and we set about getting gear on her. The mask she bought in Lae worked nicely, but we had to try a couple of different snorkels, until we found one that was OK. She slowly working her way into the water, trying breathing while squatting down, then into deeper water where I held her hand as she laid down. She swam a few 10’ lines, and then was ready for a try. As we moved away from the beach and over to the edge of the reef, she relaxed a bit and seemed OK, but then panicked about something – can’t remember why, but I think it was because she didn’t know what to do if she got water in her mask, and a little was getting in. We got off to shallower water where she could stand up, talked it through, and then she was ready to go again. I decided to head back toward the beach, so we lingered over the couple of coral heads between us and the beach for a very enjoyable time, and then back to the beach. Success!
The following morning Cindy was ready to try it again, and more confident. There was some stress as we geared up, and we had to change snorkels – Cindy to use mine, and I used Kate’s. We made it about 100 yards thoroughly enjoying ourselves, with Cindy seeming quite relaxed. However, as we got closer to one clump of coral, Cindy thought it was too shallow and she might touch it, and started thrashing. I found a shallow spot and pulled in. After we worked through that – I’d make sure she stayed deeper – we had a very nice snorkel.
When we got out, we decided to try more of the reef, and enter at our cabin. We carried our gear up there and climbed down the tree. The tide was up, so the water was deeper, but the waves were higher and the troughs deeper. This caused us our only problem on this run – as we traversed a shallow spot over some coral, the trough came and bounced us into the sharp bottom. I was afraid Cindy would be scraped, but it turned out the only injury was a scrape on one of my fingers; I hope we didn’t do much damage to the coral. But then we had a very nice run all the way down to the beach. While I was wearing my lycra body suit, Cindy hadn’t even put on sunscreen, so she has quite a burn on the back of her legs.
On Tuesday Amie, Krista, Kate and I took gummies (inner tubes) across to the island in front of the beach. Krista had found that there was a reef there when she’d gone with Jeff a couple of days earlier, and Amie wanted to explore it. It took about 10 minutes to swim across, with Amie and Krista each with a tube, and me pushing Kate across in her tube. There were some nationals whose village was up on the shore who were fishing the reef, and they drifted past as we exchanged pleasantries.
Amie and Krista crossed the reef to the shore to store the tubes while I stayed out with Kate. After they came back out, we snorkeled around and dove for about 30 minutes. It seemed to me Kate was tiring a bit, so I went in to get the tubes, snorkeling across the reef, which was very shallow. I wound my way out a channel in the reef, and when I got down to Kate and Amie, Kate immediately climbed up onto the tube, where she stayed until we were through. Kate would hold the tubes while I would dive. It sounded like Amie and Krista were enjoying each other and the snorkeling/diving. Krista really got into the free diving, going to depths of probably 15 feet.
This reef had a deeper straight wall than the one in front of Jais Aben, and the coral was a bit nicer, I think. There seemed to be fewer fish. The visibility was generally better, but there was a temperature gradient in areas that cause visibility to drop; or maybe more accurately to be diffused. We snorkeled up and down this reef for nearly an hour, and then headed back across to Jais Aben.