We visited the second blue hole in the area. This time we waited for high tide around 2pm. It was a lot easier, Rowan did not have to get into the water to do any towing. This is just as well as we have decided he should keep his leg out of water for a day, there is a little patch where his coral scrape is not healing that well. Thankfully my spider bite is healing nicely although I’m sure it is going to leave quite a hole. This river was much bigger than yesterday’s, with a bigger bridge which was easy to get under. There were however quite a lot of obstacles to avoid, like a broken old bridge lying just below the surface, some lumpy bits of coral and some fallen trees. It was a longer river ride to our destination. Another incredibly blue hole, yesterday’s felt more special but maybe that was because of the novelty, and we had it all to ourselves. We found the yachties on the other catamaran visiting too, there are three of us in the anchorage. This couple are Americans living in Thailand, he has already circumnavigated in his boat Lela, now he is doing it with his new partner. Both very nice, lots to celebrate……. they are not Trump supporters and they are doing the same route as us to Indonesia over roughly the same time, which is really reassuring. His boat is totally electric, electric engines, electric tender too. It looks very sleek, a bespoke design. He bought it pretty knackered and got it to Thailand where Madame Ni spent many years revamping it. How wonderful to have female boat workers, no wonder it has been such a successful revamp!
We had invited the Kiwi boat for drinks, so we invited Cliff and Melody on Lela too. It was very interesting hearing so many stories. Ironically it turned out the kiwi man was a Trump supporter, poor guy was so outnumbered he never took the bait to defend Trump. The kiwis are heading south, he built his catamaran, made sense as he is a boatbuilder. His wife says he has been fixing boats for the locals in the remoter Banks Islands where we are heading. The locals were so chuffed they invited them to all sorts of occasions including a wedding which must have been fun to witness. They have had 6 years living on their boat and cruising, now they are heading back to NZ to be land based, to enjoy their grandchildren. Hmmmm hope we get some grandchildren in the not too distant future!
The red crosses are the entrances to the rivers leading to the blue holes
Entering the river
Much easier bridge to get under today
Gorgeous wild dense forest, but so weird to have no wild animals, keep thinking a monkey may pop out. Not a huge amount of birdlife either, saw a kingfisher and some parrots
We had to navigate around fallen trees
Gorgeous river
Sadly a lot of the forest covered in creeper here too, I wonder how long the forest will survive
So much other plant life on the big trees
Hard work going slowly!
The Blue Hole
The colours seem unreal
A Banyan tree with a rope swing attached
The owner of the property, sadly the place is obviously not doing as well as it used to
Rowan’s arty smokey photo
Some tree roots I really liked
These too
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