The pass is one of my favorite parts of Raimiti, well that and the food. The food continues to surpass my wildest dreams. With two courses and an elaborate dessert I am definitely overeating at each meal. When I wake up in the morning, I am still full from dinner. But somehow I manage to force the fresh croissants past my lips. Such hardships.
But I was talking about the pass. It is not so much a wall of coral, as a steep slope. In some places I can see where the coral ends in sand. In other places, the coral continues on, until my view is lost is inky blackness. I swim quickly back towards the light, color and relative shallowness of the coral slope.
I am starting to measure my days by the pass. That was pass day one. That was a no pass day. Today was pass day number three. Yesterday was pass day number two. So on pass day two, I finally conquered my fear—I jumped in the water! I mean, fell into the water. I probably looked like an offended cat. I put my snorkel in to the water right away (so as not to as miss anything) and was immediately rewarded. There were six huge black tipped reef sharks (at least two meters) circling beneath us. It was a shock. They remain the most amount of sharks I have seen all together at one time.
After we had been swimming for several minutes, we saw a new species. Gliding below us was an Eagle Ray. They look kind of like a bigger version of Sting Rays. Eagle Ray’s heads are oblong, and stick out from their main bodies, hence the name for a bird. Instead of one barb on their tale, they have three. The rays’ bodies are black, covered with pale grey spots. We unfortunately saw only one: it was 15 meters below us and was winging along pretty fast.
Near the end of our snorkel/drift there is a big school of fish. They are Needle Fish, skinny bodies, long narrow noses and their bodies are silver. When I swim towards them, the school parts, half one way and half the other. The school is so big, that when the first fishes move, the last fishes haven’t moved yet. So you become surrounded by fish. You can hang suspended in the middle of them indefinitely, because they don’t swim away. Looking out, you see a ring of silver bodies. It is very cool to be surrounded by fish.
There are two other couples and one single woman staying at Raimiti. The couples are German, the lady is French. German couple number one left the same day as us. German couple number two took lots of pictures—with an underwater camera. So when they send us some images, or put them on a website, I will provide a link to the site, or just include the pictures.
September 13th:
Pass day number three dawned with no rain clouds clouding the horizon. We had high hopes that
maybe it wouldn’t rain at all, and it didn’t. As we got to the mouth of the pass Eric announced we would be doing something different. What we would do was potentially dangerous if we didn’t follow the directions, but was otherwise perfectly safe. We had a choice whether or not to do it, but everyone in my family decided to give it a try.
There is current in the pass that changes directions depending on the tides. People only ever swim in the pass when the current caries you inside the lagoon. It is dangerous when the current goes the other way, because you would be powerless to get back inside. We got dropped off near the opening of the pass, as usual, and spent our time drifting and gawking at the fish.
First potentially fatal part: Right after we normally get out of the water is an over water restaurant. As a tourist attraction, they feed the sharks and Moray Eels from the safety of the dock. Now, think. These predators associate humans with food. What happens when something stronger than you, with teeth, comes up to you and is hungry? Either you give it food, or it takes food. We all gave the restaurant a wide birth and no one was eaten. However, more sharks than normal congregated around the restaurant area. They were White Tipped Reef sharks. They are bigger than the Black Tipped Reef sharks and scarier looking too.
Second potentially fatal part: Where the pass narrows, it gets shallower. Now science geeks, what happens to a current when the river gets shallower? It gets quicker. So this current, already difficult to swim against, got about ten times stronger. But that isn’t what is dangerous. There are some old fish traps right smack in the middle of the strongest part of current. There are metal stakes in the fish trap. Great for vampires, but bad for everyone else, it could be fatal to get swept into the trap. All we had to do was navigate around the fish trap and then drift to the beach. I got separated from my partner, Momma (she was busy telling a French idiot off for walking on the coral), so I was swept along unable to get to anyone. I tried swimming against the current, but, even swimming with my fins as strongly as I could, I was being pushed backwards. And stronger swimmers than me had the current do the same to them.
While I was being swept along I was worrying. I was apprehensive about how it would end, would I be swept up on a beach? Or would I be smashed into the coral? Instead, I was carried along too far into the lagoon. I had to swim out of the current and then swim back up to the beach. It was the hardest thing I had ever done. It was disheartening to see myself only move a couple of cm each minute.
But after I realized I couldn’t do anything, I started to enjoy myself. It was how I imagine riding an air current to be like. You didn’t need to power yourself, only steer. The coral beneath me was a solid unbroken crust that was whisked away from my eyes almost to quickly for me to have seen it. There were no fish out swimming, the current being to strong –but there were little pockets in the coral, dips in the
crust. That was where the fish were. They were protected from the current there, and so the pockets were filled with hundreds of bright fish that sparkled out of the gloom.
Next we went to an atoll, a bird atoll. There were always at least hundreds of birds in the air, swarming above the island at all times. You could smell the island, the stink of thousands birds. The air was filled with their cries. There were baby birds still in the nests, birds building nests, and young ones in between the two ages.
Dinner’s appetizer that night was inedible for me. There were about ten baby octopi that had been sautéed in garlic. This was after we had seen the live version. I couldn’t even look at the poor babies. Also, maybe worse, was that they were flown in from the
