Commodore
April 22, 2023

Saturday 22 April – Snorkelling near the north pass

A few more laundry loads, thank god the last of my laundry mountain, and we were off to explore the white beaches up near the North pass. We had to pass the airport and runway which was quite exciting, especially when a plane did come in just over our heads. Only one flight a day and I don’t think it even runs every day. It’s a pretty impressive runway and much bigger planes than the dinky aircraft of the San Blas Islands.

We found a nice shady spot to spend the afternoon, we went and snorkelled when we got too hot. There was a lot of coral and dramatic big heads, but very sadly about 70% looked dead. There were pockets of intensely coloured yellows and purples, but a lot of bleached dead coral too. So tragic and so scary! There were quite a few fish, not a lot of parrot fish, mainly smaller fish. I did have a lovely viewing of a grouper having a standoff with a moray eel, the grouper managed to get the eel to move from under the coral overhang. It was lovely seeing the eel’s wavy swim out into the open to the next big piece of coral. We saw no sharks which was unusual, we have had so many around.

We headed back to PolePole which was a good few miles away, I was grateful the sea was relatively flat as we screamed along in JeldiJeldi. Rowan had booked us back in for dinner at the Hirinaki Lounge as it may be our last chance to eat out in a while as we are moving on tomorrow to the atoll of Tahanea. We had a lovely evening with live music, a couple of locals singing and playing their guitars, great voices, and of course singing French songs. It was good to see locals and yachties eating there, we had made it early enough to have their tapas menu, with shrimp samosas and a few other deliciously different dishes. We had a side of the best sweet potato fries I’ve ever had, and a side dish of very buttery, garlicky string green beans that were delicious. So nice to eat something different!