13/10/09 Day 4 Muri Beach, Fruits of Rarotonga

Snorkeling this morning . Bit windy but still warm. Headed up the road (easier than walking up the beach) to Fruits of Rarotonga. There were already quite a few people out in the water. Gwen provides snorkeling gear but in hindsight I wished we'd bought and brought our own. None of the flippers were big enough for us and the goggles were also a bit dodgy. They were ok though and did the job.

When we bought the new camera we were going to buy a spare battery duty free at Briz airport. That of course didn’t happen. We found out this morning that not doing this might have been a mistake.

Raro is the fourth place we’ve snorkeled after Hawaii, Thailand and Lady Musgrave Island.

So far, Hawaii ties with Lady Musgrave for the win. The water there was clear, there were a lot of fish and there was at least a bit of colourful coral. Thailand was next. Again, a lot of fish and the water was bath tub warm. Sadly Phi Phi’s reefs had been devastated by the tsunami so the coral was on the whole, shattered and lifeless .

Raro comes a distant last. If Fruits is the best snorkeling there is here then the rest must be terrible. We saw hardly any live coral. There were fish but not many. The water was murky. To top it off the camera went through its battery like lightening. All in all pretty disappointing but we still had a great morning. The water was warm, the beach gorgeous and we are on holidays so it has to be good! And the smoothies we had at Fruits were bloody fantastic.

We’d noticed while we were on the beach that the seas outside the reef looked to be getting bigger and the waves crashing on to them were huge. When we got back to Muri we were surprised to see that the tide hadn’t started to go out and that there were actually small waves breaking against the rocks below the cottage and all along the beach inside the lagoon. As the afternoon wore on the lagoon got murkier and murkier as the sand (and slug shit) got stirred up. We attempted to go snorkeling again but couldn’t see our feet 30cm under the surface so negotiating the (dead) coral outcrops was too dangerous and we gave up .

We’d booked dinner for tonight at Sails (even though purchasing an afternoon beer indicated that at least one of their bar staff had no idea how to count/give correct change). We also decided we wanted to see an island show so booked the one at the Highland Paradise cultural centre for Wednesday night. Best thing about this show is that they’ll pick us up and drop us backJ.

Dinner at Sails was really good. Service fantastic. Just on dusk we were attacked by mozzies, millions of them. I asked if they had any bug spray. Next minute I saw someone race out of the restaurant and race back in a few minutes later with two bottles of repellent. We both covered every exposed bit of skin with Off and proceeded to enjoy an excellent meal. We weren’t the only people to get attacked and watched other tables of diners ask for spray.

Not long after we got back to the cottage the wind started to pick up and it was followed soon after by rain. At some stage after midnight we were hit by a terrific gust of wind and I raced out on to the verandah to get all of our stuff off the line. The rain and wind didn’t let up all night.