Friday 29 August – exploring

We woke up to the news that Kruno, the Croatian guy who is skippering our friend’s boat Lella, was attacked by a croc in the bay we were at before going to check out at Norro. That bay looked like a complete no go for swimming as it is surrounded by mangroves, it was very wild and reminded us of the Chagres river in Panama, it had so much bird life, it felt pretty wild with no villages nearby. Kruno went swimming and was 100m from the boat when a small croc, he reckons only 1m long attacked him, luckily Kruno is a very well built fit guy and got it off his back, managing to swim back to the boat. It apparently swam off but then turned around to watch him! He has serious bites on his back and managed to get to a medical clinic after 8 hours motoring in Norro where they cleaned and stitched him up, with antbiotics one would hope! Ugh we had warnings and the carvers at Mbili warned us about them, but you get complacent of them as there was no sign of them and it is sooo hot. He can’t get in the water for 3 weeks, might be longer judging how many of us have sores not healing in this environment. Rowan is on his second lot of antibiotics, his current sore is not 100% healed, Claudette is back on antibiotics, her second lot since we’ve been sailing with them, and Kary has some nasty sores that I have given him mercurochrome for, as he is not taking antibiotics, pretty gruelling not to swim in this heat. Mind you with the sea water temp at 31.5 degrees, a cold shower might be more cooling. 

It was a boiling hot day, we headed off in JeldiJeldi to do some exploring, we had a snorkel nearby and saw some giant clams, which is always wonderful to see, sadly a lot of the coral looks damaged and not an abundance of fish. Not too surprising with the sea water this hot, almost unpleasant to swim in, thankfully every now and then the colder water gets stirred up a bit and you get some relief from the hot water. 

We headed to the island closest to us and were greeted by barking dogs. Last time we had wild dogs was in the Bahamas, it was very intimidating, they were big Rottweilers who would not stop following us, barking furiously. Luckily these dogs were small, suddenly 3 puppies appeared, skinny as anything but very friendly and desperately pleased to see us. We didn’t dare touch them. Brian told us yesterday their village does not allow dogs, and we wonder if these have been abandoned here to look after a little fishing camp here that Brian had told us about. Wonder what they are eating, we saw a couple of containers that obviously catch water which they can drink from. 

We couldn’t walk that far as the bush is right into the sea, it definitely feels like the islands are sinking judging from the amount of trees in the water. We headed off to the northern pass, Rowan likes to snorkel them as it brings in fresh water, better fish and coral normally. It was much further than expected, and rather disappointing, all scoured out and not much fish. Very glad we didn’t attempt to bring PolePole through this pass, although it looks wider and deeper it has far more hazardous coral outcrops everywhere. We had a lovely time watching a turtle who was oblivious of us for a few minutes, before getting the fright of its life and dashing off at speed. I got out when I spotted a relatively big reef shark! However having seen all the shark fins hanging up in the village, I should think the sharks keep well away from humans.  Sadly being sold to the Chinese according to Brian. 

It was a ghastly 4 mile dinghy ride back to PolePole straight into the wind and biggish waves. Seriously uncomfortable. What a relief to get home.  Amazing to have no village boats out to see us. I wonder if they have no canoes as there are no big trees on the islands. There is another village way down the other end of the atoll, but way too difficult for us to take PolePole down there through the coral reefs. It is a very long atoll, with just a scattering of little islands on the rim. The water colour is sensational.