Friday 19 December – snorkelling the House reef

Phoebs and Rowan went for a good long paddle in the kayak through the Pef islands. Phoebs has named the kayak Canoodle, they went through some of the narrow passages, over some pretty shallow coral and had a good explore. I got some much needed laundry and tidying up done. The resort closed today, the last guests departed plus all the Christian staff. We could hear endless drums and singing last night and then a lot of music this afternoon as the farewells were said. We were asked to stay away until 3:30pm, we were desperate to get in the water it was so hot, as soon as we could we headed in to snorkel the house reef. We saw the new manager that we had met last time, a rather timid Belgian lady, who is having Christmas all on her own here with the local Muslim staff. So impressed that the Muslim staff get 3 weeks off at Ramadan while the Christian staff get off now. We went and had a good snorkel over their lovely enormous clams. The visibility was not great and a lot of the coral does not look in good shape, but there is plenty that is good and lots of fish. We saw a lovely big Grouper, 3 lobsters, a turtle and a little ray, besides all the normal fish.

The place was like a ghost town as we left just after 5pm. The anchorage is stiflingly hot as it is so protected it gets no breeze at all. We just had a salad for supper, I think we were too hot to eat! We enjoyed a good sunset on the trampoline until the mozzies got us.