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| Harald was very friendly |
With the rest of the group weighed down by exhaustion from coral planting, Beth, Linnea and Lisa decided to go snorkelling in order to survey for turtles. As the resort was low on guests that day, one of the dive instructors, Z-Man (real name = Zainal), had some free time and so we asked him to come with us. We started off at our jetty, swimming over our previously planted corals, and slowly started to venture along the edge of the coral reef. We kept Steve's words from the previous day in mind, "Snorkelling is not a competition; there is no destination. The journey is the most important part." and thus took our time.
Z-Man, being more experienced in the waters of Pom Pom, had a sharp eye for all of the flora and fauna and pointed out a lot of the exotic fish. We saw two lion fish (Beth saw the third hiding under a rock, as she was getting up close to teeny-tiny fishies and taking videos of them with her pro-underwater camera), which don't look at all like lions. Which makes one wonder why they are called lion fish at all. Do they roar....? Moving on, we were most intrigued by the neon-blue fish which excitedly bobbed in and out of little pieces of coral fragments.Beth's favourite fish are the clown fish. Sadly we didn't see Nemo but probably close relatives of his. Clown fish are extremely inquisitive and once they have worked up the courage to leave their anemone homes, they will swim right up to your face. Steve says, that eventually they will start to nibble on your mustache hairs. Unfortunately, the three of us girls had shaved our moustaches that morning and could not test this theory...
The most amazing encounters however, were with the turtles. We had only seen one on Pom Pom up to that point and would squeal underwater (resulting in us choking on water) every time we saw another one. We're pretty sure that we saw Squirt and Crush from Finding Nemo, chilling out on the sea bed having a snooze. We saw 18 turtles in total, however one encounter sticks out the most for us.
At first Harald the turtle (one of the biggest turtles we saw up close and personal) seemed unaware of our presence as he was gracefully gliding through the water away from us. When suddenly, Harald changed his direction and started swimming towards us. All three of us were flabberghasted by how close he was getting. He kept swimming closer and closer until he was less than a meter away from our faces. We must admit we were quite frightened by this peaceful and toothless creature and had flashes of him turning into a man-eating turtle, so we began to back away. By the time we felt that we were well out of his reach, Harald had gotten bored of us and disappeared into the deep blue.
After 45 minutes of snorkelling we all agreed that maybe it was time to slowly start heading in (because remember, snorkelling has no destination). We started to swim back to the beach but noticed that the tide was going out and as a result the current was against us. We soon realised that there was no way that we could swim back and thought we were doomed to die. Z-Man however was quite casual and easy-going about the situation and, just like Dori, kept swimming. We followed, hoping that he perhaps knew a different area where the current would not be so strong. Instead it seemed as if his plan was to swim all the way to the otherside of the island, where there was a jetty belonging to the other resort on the island. We also felt bad about being gone for so long, as it meant that the others had to do more work. Plus we thought that perhaps Steve might be getting worried about us (which in the end, he wasn't). And so we disregarded Steve's destination-competition snorkelling motto, and swam faster towards the jetty.
Once we got there, we were absolutely exhausted and none of us wanted to walk all the way back. Luckily, a boat with divers from our resort was not too far from the jetty and picked us up along the way, enabling us to get back in no time at all.
Despite the fact that our snorkell turned into a race-to-the-jetty adventure, the three of us loved the experience. Due to the fact that we snorkelled further than usual, we were able to see a diverse range of corals and fish. Those two hours are irreplaceable and will never be forgotten by any of us (that's cheesy, but so true).
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