On the Southern side of the bay there are some small secluded broken coral beaches with a rocky reef off them. We have chosen one to build a fire and toast our tuna over it for lunch, and go for a snorkle. The jungle comes right up to the beach and is smothered with climbing vines. I am certain there could be no way through to here by land! Well looking on google earth, there are actually some houses back there! Wow.
There was a bit of a swell so landing in our kayaks was a bit tricky at high tide while the beach was still quite steep. But we did so without mishap which is always a bonus. And without mishap I mean myself been thrown unceremoniously into the water.
After we landed we went for a snorkel, but because of the swell the water was quite silty. The reef that I saw was mainly rocky with only small patches of coral, but it had these amazing crevices that went really really deep. Our visibility wasn’t great but I would have expected to be able to see to seabed this close to shore, and I couldn’t.
Back on the beach we could see the coral moving, and when you looked closely there are hundreds of tiny hermit crabs moving around. No matter where you looked you could find a hermit crab. I had fun trying to find the tiniest! This was it I think, I have left my fingers in photo so you can get perspective.
But they were all so cute.
Dean spent a bit of time getting our smokey fire going and our tuna tasted great after we roasted and smoked it in the fire on sticks.
As the tide went out and the swell went down it was actually nice to just laze in the shallows in our little bay for a while. I was floating in the water and something was bothering me in my hair, like right on my scalp, and I ran my fingers through my hair a bit frantically with memories of the sea snake I had seen here the day before still in my mind. I plucked out a little hermit crab! Kind of gave me the creeps. I spent ages flushing my hair in the water to ensure there were no other critters hiding in there! It is clearly time to give my hair a good wash when I get back to the boat!
We had a lazy kayak back to the boat, hoping to spot the dugong. We have a really old Lonely Planet guide to the Pacific and it talks about a dugong that hangs out in the bay. I swear to god I don’t know what this thing eats because admittedly I didn’t inspect every part of the bay, but I didn’t see one piece of sea grass. The LP guide we have says go snokelling and if you see it give it a scratch on the belly! I had to laugh out loud at that. I mean with all of our preciousness today there is no way on the planet (pun intended) that anyone would suggest doing that now. Anyway I had been hoping to see him underwater, but as much as I would have wanted to, I probably wouldn’t have given him a friendly scratch. Well I might have if he’d rolled over for a rub like the guide said he did!
When we got back to our boat a final delivery boat for the day arrived. As it came into the bay, still moving quite fast, there were men jumping into its tender that had been moved along side and people on the boat were chucking stuff down to them that needed to be delivered to shore. This thing did not look sea worthy and it was pumping out copius amounts of water from the side. As they motored past us we waved and they yelled and laughed and hooted at us. It was quite hilarious. This crew are definitely the clowns, out of the supply boats we’ve seen so far. Then the tender went ashore and unloaded its goods, picked up people, while the big boat floated and waited.
People just have their stuff waiting on the beach ready to go. The day before I had spotted someones shopping, waiting for a boat, neatly wrapped in a green leaf and a stick through it to stop it unwinding. This is one of the reasons there is so little rubbish. That and the fires that are burning everywhere, and I must admit I see the appeal. I was beginning to feel a bit pyromanical when we had our beach fire and just wanted to keep feeding leaves and twigs into it!
The people got aboard, they chucked up the new bags and stores onto the roof and then they were gone as quick as they arrived. There looked to be an albino Ni-Vanuatu man on the roof catching the bags, who was a bit sunburnt.
By the time we left Epi to return to Port Havannah on saturday morning, two catamarans had joined us mono’s.
Run to Paradise 