Jetty Journey

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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The Thunder Storm

The first night on Pom Pom Island, everything seemed to be alright. However that is until we decided to hit the sack. Previously during the  day we had set up three tents and put a giant blue canvas over all.   The other 2 tents were pitched but we wanted to go snorkelling so we left the canvas till later.  Well with the excitment of the day, later never happened so Steve's tent and Jackie and Emily's tent were not protected by the giant canvas. This meant that they were more vulnerable to rain, should it occur. Since we weren't in monsoon season though, we didn't think that, that would be a problem. Little did we know, not finishing the tent construction was a big mistake...

The damp towels drying on the giant canvas which
covered all the tents.

In the middle of our slumber - around 2am - the heavens opened, leading to a tremendous downpour of rain onto our tents. Wind, thunder and lightning worked together to create one of the scariest nights of our lives. The canvas on top of 3 of our tents soared into the air - separating our tents and itself by 6 feet. Water gushed through the open mosquito nets, forcing those awake to get up and close the windows; fighting against the moving sides of the tent. During this commotion, the canvas-less tent belonging to Jackie and Emily was drowning in water; the very target of mother nature's rage. The tent looked like it was going to take off at any moment with the girls inside, regardless of the fact that Steve had pinned down the tent with extra pegs. The opening of the tent was flapping wet against the girls, leaving them trapped inside with no way out. Whilst Emily was really upset and panicking, Jackie was soothing herself with the help of her ipod, constantly telling Emily "chin up"; hiding her own fear.

Just in time, Steve decided to walk to the girls' tent and get them out before collapsing it. With people awake, the girls were taken in to two of the other tents with open arms. The only funny part, arguably, was Emily shouting "I HAVE NO PANTS ON!" whilst frantically running through the rain in front of Steve. Ironically, it wasn't because she couldn't find anything to wear down below - she had a sarong in her hand. Silly girl.

The next morning I awoke to find 8 other faces staring back at me from outside the tent. "Oh look, Louise is FINALLY awake!" The word 'finally' didn't refer to the fact that I had overslept or slept for a long period of time, but to the fact that I was awake for the first time since the night before. I had slept through one of the worst torrential rainstorms ever seen on the island, and still managed to sleep like a baby :)
 Although it seemed exciting, the 3 tents under the canvas remained dry and while J & Em tent looked like a disaster zone, very little was actually wet underneath the canvas.

An hours work in the sunshine and all the tents were pitched under the giant canvas and ready for anything. 

By: Louise Arild, ft. Naomi Hudson

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Getting to Pom Pom

To get to Semporna from KK we had to take a bus, then boat over to Pom Pom island, overall the journey took 12 hours all of which were incredibly exhausting. We got to the bus station at around 6:00pm which was subsequently followed by 1and a half hours outside a police station. Some would blame this on just being paranoid tourists, but I would say we were just coincidently there. The bus had a puncture so that had to be fixed before we could leave.  The 8 hour bus ride could be compared to Dantes 9 circles of hell. It would be described as less then pleasant and hardly a wink of sleep was gained by any person on the bus apart from myself, as I am really awesome.

The buses are modern and comfortable.

There are few things in life that I am thankful for but blankets are certainly one of them. The blasting air con certainly did not contribute to the joy of the bus ride, but thankfully I was able to actually to get to sleep considering my friend allowed me to conveniently place my legs over her whilst I slept. However some may argue that I am able to get to sleep just about anywhere because my slumber lasted throughout an hour after getting off the bus, sitting in the TRACC office, and then proceeded to continue throughout the boat trip over to Pom Pom island.

Sleeping in the office

It took a while to pack all of our equipment and luggage and Guido was surprised at how many bags we had. There was a moment of worry about if we would have to make two trips or if the boat would be able to sustain the amount of luggage we had, including the weight of everyone who needed to travel over. After what seemed like ages of planning and rearranging, we finally set off with all the bags and all the people on board.
Making our way to the island, there was yet another brief moment of panic when the boat stopped, but luckily that was just a false alarm, as there was only a small amount of plastic that covered the engine for a second, the bag then luckily untangled itself and the boat continued sailing through the waves.

Sleeping on the boat

Overall the boat journey was an hour, maybe more, quite hard to tell actually because I did end up sleeping throughout the whole journey with my friend lying on my shoulder. Could have been 30 minutes could have been an hour and a half. Only after we got to the island did I find out that there were photos taken of me as I slept. Very unfortunate that they would not be deleted either.
We arrived at the island at about 8:45 and were all completely drained of energy by the end of the whole trip. We all really just wanted to sleep. Despite our best efforts to try and take a nap, we were then instructed to unload all of the bags and equipment from the boat and load it on to a massive canvas that we had placed on the sand. We decided to try and make a productive chain so that we could get the job done quicker and then rest. Overall the journey was hard, but fingers crossed its well worth it.
Jackie Mac

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