Tuesday 9 July – Exploring caves

A beautiful sunny day, Rowan packed a picnic and we headed off to explore. The bay was quite choppy which we had to cross to find an exit out the other side. From a distance you would never know you could exit but various twists and turns got us out. Dramatic cliffs along the way and of course endless islands. We got out and found two of the sailing boats had moved here, the water was pretty choppy and we thought it was incredibly brave of them. We hugged the shoreline between small islands with the water getting more and more vibrantly blue. We spotted the first cave hole so we went through the passage and anchored JeldiJeldi. The coral was lovely and the cave was stunning. A little entrance lead into an enormous cave which I thought was like Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, lots of holes like skylights.

After we had a good look around, the crew from the cat that had helped us with our stuck anchor chain, came into the passage. They were going into yet another cave, an extremely narrow entrance that you have to swim through and dive under a lip in the pitch dark. I was way to frightened, thankfully the two guys offered to take Rowan through as they had been before. They also took their phone to use as a torch otherwise it was pitch dark! After about 15m it opened up into an enormous body of water, either it was a collapsed cave, or sunken land. It was like a crater, with the only access through the cave. Rowan came up too quickly swimming through the cave and gave the top of his head a real clonk. All worth it though apparently, I’m just happy looking at the videos he took!

That was enough excitement for one day, it was very protected in the passage way, but too windy outside to have a picnic, so we had it back on PolePole.

Excuse the number of photos and videos but they were too good to leave out.

Setting off across the bay

The colour of the water changes dramatically with the angle of the sun

This is the way out of the bay!

Coming out the other side

The boats that came and anchored out here, it doesn’t look to bad in the photo but it was really windy

Heading into the passage way of islands where the caves are

The black hole above the bright blue water is the entrance to the first cave

Looking backwards along the way we had come

Anchoring JeldiJeldi to go to the caves

Getting ready

Lovely coral and snorkelling

Entering the first cave

Inside the cave

Coming out the cave the other side

So much interesting coral

Photos taken from JeldiJeldi above the water

The entrance to the second cave is impossible to spot it is at water level and you swim into it. In the V of the land is the hidden lagoon they swim through to

Going in

Coming out, notice the phone torch guiding them out

Mushroom rocks everywhere

Exploring on our way back

This is the boat One Life who we were in Suwarrow with, they found an amazing little anchorage so well tucked away, they put out 3 stern lines, to hold them tight, and they were very pleased.