What the???...

Almost 2 months since we arrived and life seems to have its own rhythm and own set of rules down here.  Things that are the norm in Canada are things the Cook Islands are struggling to adapt to, or things we took for granted in Canada are issues here, or sometimes we have a vision in mind of tropical reefs and they aren't what you envisioned, … not really surprising I guess when you think about it…

fr'instance, 

Below is a pic of the George "bikie" gang, .  In Canada, normal riding gear would be leathers and a helmet.  I'm wearing the typical Cook Island riding gear i.e. T-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, sunnies and a ball cap, all of which seem to be optional except for the shorts as I've seen plenty of locals riding round wearing just shorts,… or old ladies dressed for church with big hats,… or riders carrying all manner of paraphenalia with one hand while riding in all manner of outfits…. anyways, I digress.  They are introducing a law so that every one is required to wear helmets, so does that mean in the interest of decorum and safety, minimum required riding gear would be a helmet and shorts??.  Hmmm if I see that, then I will have seen it all!!.

Editors note: Tere is still without a vehicle due to the incident reported in the post 'School Daze'

fr'instance

Water is an issue right now.  Apparently, we are suffering the declining effects of a La Nina weather pattern that has resulted in a longer than usual dry spell.  All sorts of meteorological reports abound predicting one thing or another, some dark and foreboding, others non-committal, government is asking the populace to conserve water, some of us are wondering whether the future will bring rain or not.  I saw this in the paper and I say, thank God we have "The Weather Rock"!!

fr'instance

When I first saw "Finding Nemo" I was blown away by the graphics depicting the reefs and the sea-life living amongst it.  In Rarotonga, one of the best places to swim is Aro'a beach.  There is a huge coral reef out there that we snorkel regularly just "swimming with the fishes".  Not as vivd as the "Nemo" reef but pretty nonetheless.

Cut to Fri Oct 21… Tania & I were sitting on brain coral watching some kids a little ways off.  They were all excited as they had found a moray.  A little later we looked back and the kids were gone so we thought we would swim over and see if we could see the eel they had seen before heading back in.  I swam past a brain coral and into a small channel of sand between two areas of reef.  As I approached the other side, I saw a big sinuous yellow spotted body swim down behind a coral head about 4 metres away and then a huge moray head pop out from a gap.  This is not the actual eel but it's the same as the one I saw;

Needless to say my heart jumped.  I looked around for Tania, swam back to the brain coral until I found her and there she was, just standing there nonchalantly cleaning her goggles.

Tania:

Well, Ina is right up to a certain point.  We did swim over to where the kids were.  Ina went one way and I went another.  I was keeping my eyes peeled as I swam around the coral as I don't like eels to begin with.  I approached a massive brain coral, surrounded by other types of coral, with a channel of sand on the far side.  I was about to swim over the coral, towards the sand, when I looked down and saw the head of a spotted moray eel amongst the coral.  After lots of back pedalling and splashing about, I found a place to stand up.  I was positive this was the eel the kids had seen as it wasn't that big or scary looking:

 I saw Ina on the other side of the brain coral, swimming and moving about and thought I'd wait 'til he saw me so I could show him the eel.  When he came over, he pulled his mask off and said, "I found it and it's a monster.  I'm not @#$%ing you". He then told me to duck down and look straight ahead, past the brain coral and I would see its head.  I pulled my mask and snorkel back on and did what he said.  Nothing...  A few seconds later, I saw this monster eel weaving and swimming in our general direction.  It went down the channel of sand on the other side of the coral.  I rapidly ducked behind Ina and kept him and the brain coral between myself and that monster.  Once it was well past, I took off and headed back to shore. I paused to make sure Ina was still with me, let him know I was done for the day and hightailed it out of there.  Good thing I wasn't having my blood pressure taken that day as my heart was just pounding.  I now know where NOT to snorkel because I don't want to see THIS again:

Ina:

I guess it looked a little different to Tania but when the eel swam down the channel I estimated it to be approximately 1.5 to 2 metres in length.  Tania thought it was a little longer.  Swimming with goggles tends to make things look bigger so it looked all of 2 metres to me so 1.5 metres should be about right.  Anyways, I certainly did not see anything like that on "Nemo's" reef but it made for an exciting swim.  Admittedly one of the thoughts I had when I first saw the eel was that I never actually saw those kids go back in??…  On the way back, I saw some pretty big trevally feeding on something near another coral head.  Seems to have been a "BIG" day on the reef.

'Nuff said for now