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Published: October 16th 2008
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A clownfish
Clownfish are protected against the poison of the soft coral - they're one of the few fish that can touch it We got up pleased that we had a whole day of doing nothing ahead of us. I know that we’ve had plenty of those sorts of days over the last two months, but over the last week it has been different as Matt has been doing his diving course, I’ve not been well or we’ve been on trips. We’ve missed just hanging out together and snorkelling and laying on the beach and that is how we planned to spend our entire day.
We started with a late breakfast - 8.30am which was a massive lay in compared to normal. We were the only ones in the bar eating as everyone else had long been and gone. Before we’d even finished it started to rain so our hopes of getting on the beach started to look slim. We went for a walk along the beach while it was spitting but then as the black clouds properly descended we headed back to the lounge area before the heaviest downpour we’ve seen in a long time started. At it’s worst you couldn’t see the islands opposite through the mist and rain, and the lagoon surface was being completely pelted. It was amazing to
watch such a heavy rain shower. Unfortunately for us it didn’t end up being just a shower, and a few hours later we were still sitting in the lounge undercover reading our books.
Matt happened to look up and saw one of the big spiders with the white bodies hanging in the rafters right above his head. We shifted along the sofa to the other end but if had it dropped it would still have landed right next to him. We carried on reading but regularly both kept looking up to make sure that he was still there. At one point the wind changed direction and started to blow through the open air lounge from behind, sending the spider in his web into a swinging motion above us. One of the guys who works in the grounds saw us looking up and came to the rescue with a big pole. He looped the web onto the pole but the spider tried to escape so he pulled it down towards him and grabbed it gently in his hand. It ran right up his arm. Matt, another girls and I had all moved to the sofa furthest away at this point
and we all cringed in unison at the sight of it.
We were pleased when he took it outside and put it in the tree, but it was still pouring down so I did feel a bit guilty that we’d thrown the poor spider out of his warm, dry hiding place.
It carried on raining until after lunch time. Eventually we were able to go out onto the beach. I’d saved a chunk of breakfast muffin that morning so that we could feed the fish that are always in the shoreline as we’d seen some other people doing it. Straight away after dropping a crumb in they went crazy and we must have had at least twenty of thirty around us. It made us laugh so we started dropping more in and watching the fish jump over themselves to get at the food. Matt suggested holding a bit in our hands to see if they’d take it. I tried it and within seconds fish had knocked the food right out of my hands. Matt tried it and one bit him. Then one nipped the back of my leg. It was time to give them the rest of the
crumbs and get out. It’s not as much fun feeding fish when you know they’ve got teeth!
As it was high tide we decided to go straight out to snorkel together to the drop off. There were all the usual fish there but this time also a couple of big puffer fish, plenty of clown fish (including a tiny baby one), which we managed to get some great photos of even though they’re really shy, and a few stripy ones that I hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t long before I got cold so had to go back into the shallows to warm up leaving Matt to carry on practicing skin diving.
When I came back in I sat in the shallow water with a German mother and daughter who it seemed had been absolutely everywhere…Thailand, Caribbean,. Maldives, Iran, Pakistan, Tunisia…They still couldn’t tell me their favourite place though - I‘m beginning to realise that you can‘t pick out one place when you‘ve been to so many. They then told me about their fish feeding attempts earlier in the week and showed me the bites on their fingers; it looked nasty so I think we came off lucky with
just a quick nip.
When Matt finally came in (after going to see the seahorses one last time) we headed back to our room to get started on our packing. It’s been a nice change having a whole week where we didn‘t have to pack but that also meant our stuff was in a real mess.
We headed down to dinner, and due to lack of choice on the menu (and the fact that we’d been craving curry) we ended up ordering beef curry. We had no idea that it was going to be fillet steak curry, but it was. That means that we’ve had fillet steak for about four of our evening meals here over the last week! Pretty good going to say we’re supposed to be on a tight budget.
We came back to our room to find something next to my pillow. It was brown and looked like a big plump raisin, only bigger. We didn’t know what it was so I picked it up with a tissue. As soon as I did I realised it was gecko poo. Nice. Matt got his own back at last by laughing at me this time. I
made sure that I slept under the net again - there is no way that I want wee, poo, spiders or geckos falling on me while I’m asleep.
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