Blake and Deb in Fiji: Snorkeling

We took a “Bay and Beach” tour which was to include a narrated tour of Savusavu Bay and a couple of hours at one of the few nice sandy beaches in the area. The tour company also gave us the option of taking some of their snorkeling equipment in case we wanted to try a bit of that. Good thing they did because the bay tour was pretty lame. The boat operators basically just went straight across to the opposite side of the bay, then along the coast just enough to point out a copra (coconut) mill, adjacent BP refinery, and a shoreline village. I think the total narration consisted of three sentences. The beach they took us to was small and nice enough, but still a bit rocky. Overall, we would have viewed the tour as a complete ripoff had it not been for the unlikely saving grace of snorkeling.

I was a bit unsure about snorkeling as I’ve never tried it and don’t even really swim. Myra has never snorkeled either. Deborah swims well enough but hasn’t been snorkeling in something like 25 years. We also brought Semoko along, our trusty Fijian neighbor who is very comfortable in the water. While the rest of us had on life jackets and flippers, Semoko was swimming around in his flip flops. After the unimpressive initial minutes of struggling with unfamiliar equipment and floating over mostly empty seafloor, we eventually got the hang of it and then stumbled upon some really interesting coral reefs full of colorful fish, sea stars, and giant urchins. It really made me wish I had an underwater camera.

We were mostly in warm shallow water where you could even stand up, but I wasn’t bothered by the deeper sections either thanks to the miracle of the life jacket. Even if, as Deborah said, it made me look like some dorky character from Borat, I was amazed how well it kept me comfortably afloat no matter how inadequate my swimming skills. My biggest problem was keeping saltwater from going up my nose. I regularly use a saline nasal spray at home anyway, but this was way too much fluid for comfort. Either I wasn’t breathing 100% through my mouth as I intended, or the facemask wasn’t making a good seal against my face, possibly because of my beard. If Deborah and I follow through on our intention to try snorkeling again, I will either need a nose clip or a shave.