Beer on the Beach

Our jaunt to the beach for Happy Hour was a sweet change of pace. Once we figured out how to tie the whaler off so it didn't bash up onto the beach and become high and dry as it was a receding tide, all was calm and peaceful. To our pleasant surprise, the beach turned out to be two sided, beach on the side that we tied up and a very short walk (100 steps) up and over a bump and we were on a beach on the other side of the island. So we had a walk on the sunny side and then a quite beer on the shady side. A small herd of goats joined us in our relaxing.

We moved to a new anchorage off of the beaten track of the Moorings Fleet that plies these waters (charter boats) and were rewarded with a very serene and beautiful setting. The Vava'u Group here in Tonga is a collection of small islands joined by reefs and narrow waterways resulting in nearly 100 cozy anchorages. The landscape is high rocky cliffs next to white sandy beaches, a perfect play ground. The weather was calm and sunny and the water below us reflected the sandy bottom for a swimming pool effect. Only us in the whole bay. We snorkeled the nearby reef and spotted quite a few new fishes and coral species that we haven't encountered before. As divers, our greatest thrill is finding the rare, the unexpected and the new. I am convinced that this is the perfect location to find the elusive "frog fish", it looks like a yellow/orange sponge, so this is my mission while underwater.

We've moved again to another lovely spot. This one is a bit more boat populated. We have our most calm and perfect conditions to date. The water is truly "glass" calm, you can see the star fish on the sandy bottom as clear as day, the sun is shining and there is a "breath" of moving air. When it is like this, you can't imagine being anywhere else and because it is so fleeting, you absorb as much of it as you can. The clouds rolled in for the afternoon while we were out trying to find a suitable dive spot, getting lost in the labyrinth of surface crashing reefs, and the skys opened up and water poured forth. Good thing we had our wet suits on as we certainly got wet. Navigating in these parts, even in a small boat, is best done in high light conditions so that you can see the color variations of the water and therefore the depths. With the dark sky and rough water conditions, we definitely could not tell where the shallow spots were (don't want to run aground), we headed back to the big boat. Today it is still overcast, but we aren't complaining, it is still warm and wonderful. We'll use lat/long coordinates to get to our chosen dive site for today.

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