Snorkelling the sardine run & the appearance of a turtle

We had to pack up our bags again this morning as we were moving out from Okeanos Hotel to Blue Orchid, 20 minutes up the coast, where we’re staying for Christmas. After packing and checking out, we left our bags there and headed to the waterfront for a bit to eat. Amelia based herself in the restaurant overlooking the sea where she was journaling and reading her book. I meanwhile was on a mission to see sardines and turtles. Just off the coast at Pangasama Beach is a reef, which runs pretty much the entire length of the Moalboal coast. Here, where the seabed drops off to the abyss of the ocean, is the sardine run. Basically quite a cool way of saying; there’s a massive shoal of sardines here. After leaving Amelia I hired a snorkel set (mask, snorkel, fins) and headed out into the sea. The sardine run is seriously impressive, diving down through the shoal you get a glimpse of how they attempt to evade predators by sticking together in their thousands. A true reflection of the safety in numbers principle. They (the sardines) also avoid the bubbles rising from the divers below, therefore getting compressed into a space between the divers below, the cliff to the side, the wide expanse of ocean out to sea, and the snorkellers above. 

After witnessing this and many other very colourful fish whose names I have absolutely no idea of, I headed out and back to Amelia. We trotted over to a creperie for a light lunch (if a ham and cheese crepe is ‘light’) then went back over to a slightly different stretch of beach. I again adorned the equipment and headed back out to sea, and again swam through the sardines, taking more note of all the other fish around as well, although my main aim was to find a turtle. When paddling just beyond the end of the sardines, aimlessly heading towards a patch of reef I hadn’t crossed before I came across a group of beginner divers, and a large turtle. I was expecting to find a turtle in the middle of a large group of snorkelers (I’d been swimming between groups of people in the morning in the quest to find a turtle, to no avail), however this chap was just on his/her own, nibbling on a piece of coral. I followed him around for a bit then, noting his exact position, hurried over to the beach to wake up a slumbering Amelia for her GoPro so I could get actual evidence of this. Safe to say I was pretty excited. 

I managed to get a great video, although another snorkeller was very annoying by getting ridiculously close to me and thrusting his camera literally right in front of mine. A stern look dissuaded him though and I got some great footage when it came up to the surface, literally less than a foot away from me, for some air and back down to the sea floor. It wasn’t on the bucket list to swim with a wild turtle but it probably should have been, an amazing experience. 

After this high we packed up and headed over to the Blue Orchid resort where we are staying for Christmas. It should be a slightly nicer place with a pool etc so we can just relax for a couple of days. We successfully got a trike over there, although the road up to the resort, which must be over a kilometre, is atrocious. Very glad to be out of the trike after the backbreaker of a journey we were shown to our very acceptable room and settled in. I think we’re going to be pretty happy here for the next couple of days.