Red Fish Yellow Fish

Fishes – Swimming, snorkelling on Rarotonga

You can’t go to a Pacific desert island and not go in the sea, so we wasted no time and got ourselves kitted up, new masks, snorkels and fins from ‘THE’ dive shop on Rarotonga, turned out to be a very good purchase.

We started our underwater adventure, as you know in Rarotonga (Raro as the locals refer to it) where there are a number of good recommended snorkelling spots around the 30km of coast. But to start with we went out right in front of our little beach house we (upgrades are brilliant, doesn’t usually happen to us, beat the hillside).

Anyway our beach was almost always deserted. Visibility was maybe 2 meters (due to the wind and the waves coming over the reef I guess), depth about 1.5 metres. There were plenty of fishes to see, although the colours weren’t so bright (it was a cloudy day). We managed to tick off 4 or 5 fish on the fish chart we had purchased, a good start, and then there was the sea snake (black and white, 1 inch diameter, maybe 1 meter long)... brilliant, just what we need, freaked Kat out a bit! Would it bite? Was it poisonous? Was it a water bourn death adder? Anyway we exited the water safe and sound. The next day the man in the dive shop assured us that snakes weren’t going to hurt us, but just don’t step on a stone fish... Sounded like that’s the only thing you need to worry about out, looks like a stone, so don’t go into the water barefoot and stand on anything.. great.

We snorkelled most of the recommended spots on the island and had a fantastic time, the water was clear and warm, as the week progressed the visibility got better and better, and the fish more plentiful, the colours amazing, and swimming with them very strange, like being in a giant aquarium.

On one occasion we drove our little scooter down to the ‘Rarotonga beach resort and spa’, we walked along the immaculately groomed beach out front of the nice complex and commandeered 2 beach loungers, cheeky but hey, no one else was using them. So German style we put our towels down and made ourselves comfortable.

In the water we found ourselves immediately surrounded by large (30cm) fish circling, eyeing us up like a flock of vultures (or should that be school of piranha?), I guess they get fed round there regularly. This freaked Kat out a bit (again) and she hid behind me for cover :-) They soon swam off though, as soon as they worked out either we didn’t have any food or that we weren’t food.

I’d say that of the whole island this spot was our pick, even more fish, in big schools, the sky was clear and so the colours were brighter, it seemed that every time we went somewhere different it just got better.