So we had a morning now to kill. I was already wearing contacts, seemed a waste to take them out so we decided to go snorkeling again. We had to find a new spot today as the wind was churning up the water enough to make it hard to see anything (and the fish were hiding). So we headed further south looking for a more protected, windless side. The south coast turned out to be much calmer but still we plowed on. The west coast though was amazingly calm. We pulled up to a nice beach with lots of coral visible and the water surface relatively calm. Three small Cook Island kids (the oldest had to be 4, 5 tops) were playing in the water. They were friendly and ran over to say "hi". We put down our gear on the sand and waded out. We snorkeled and once again were blown away by the fish life. Blaise again had a cluster of fishie friends, we saw the Picasso Triggerfish, tonnes of wrasse and of course the butterfly fish. There was a needlefish (similar to the cornet fish i saw the day before but smaller), big bluefin trevally and scissortail sergeants. Basically a whole new set of fish. The odd thing was that we saw completely different fish species. For example on the east side of the island there was tonnes of threadfin butterfly. On the west side of the island I saw very few of threadfin butterfly but tonnes of racoon butterfly fish.
A cute little wrasse (threespot or sunset, not sure which subspecies) came up to me. I mean right in front of my mask, just hovering there was a cute little fish. So in my excitement I bubbled "Blaise" and pointed at the fishie. The cute little fishie ...BIT ME! I mean it wasn't hard or anything, it was just surprising. Blaise who had been looking at this spectacle the whole time was laughing at me. Turns out they enjoy eating a banana out of tourist's hand so maybe he thought finger = banana.
We got back out of the water to sit on the sand for a while. Blaise took a nap for a bit and I hauled out my little 2 string stunt kite he had bought me. The wind just took the kite and it whipped back and forth. The three children immediately came running over squealing with delight. The oldest one, a girl, was delighted and hooked and stood in front of me holding onto the strings. Blaise at one point wanted his turn so my young friend and I took over the job of launching it. Then the young lady demanded her go "by herself". Blaise agreed spot her which turned out to be a good thing. She was capable of holding onto the strings even though they pulled quite hard but she did sort of launch out of the water from the pull (I know that experience) at which point Blaise grabbed her and held her down. She flew the kite until her auntie called her "to stop bothering the tourists and time to go". I took one more turn and managed to put it into a palm tree. Blaise's exact quote was "man i'm glad you did that to your kite and not me". We got it out with a bit of strategic pulling and a lucky wind gust.
When we returned home Blaise called me in a loud urgent tone, he had discovered a rather large cockroachy friend. No sorry thats wrong, it was a large cockroach.
Minutes later we saw a baby house gecko, the type that eat insects...I really hope he was a smart little baby because I'm pretty sure that cockroach could have eaten it. If you squint you can see it below the speaker's left corner, tiny green thing. Click on the pictures to get the full size version.
I begged for a sunset takeaway dinner. We stopped at the takeaway we had seen each time we went through town, grabbed 2 burgers and a chip and headed to the north-west shore to watch a sunset. We were a bit late for the red clouds but it was pretty nonetheless with light streaming through the clouds. It was a great end to the day that didn't have scuba ^^bb
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