Early this morning the rest of the party turned up, five more couples and two children. One of our number was a Cook Islander with the obvious local connections.
What a lazy day, moving very slowly in the warm air today, our first stop was some coffee and then we filled the bikes with petrol, that was about it, unless you count finding the best snorkelling so far out the back of the smallest and most southerly motu was interesting.
Six of us paddled out to snorkel on the reef side of this motu called Koromiri , it was full of fish and quite wonderful. Our local surprised us by revealing she had never been snorkelling in the lagoon before, extraordinary when you think how wonderful this place is. What a great time and we saw heaps of fish in a great variety, best spot yet for snorkeling.
The rocks close to shore have a surface like glass, we were all tentatively shuffling about when getting in and out of our Kayaks.These rocks are extremely slippery, you felt like some minor disaster was just around the corner.
The Kayaks were the colorful, sit on top style plastic Kayaks, that had a sort of double skin, so you sat on the top skin and then there was an air space and then the keel of the vessel. The inside space could be drained with via a bung hole in the rear of the canoe. We packed up to leave, due to the slipperiness of the rocks described above, climbing on our kayaks was problematic making spills a distinct possibility. It didn’t surprise us as we paddled away to see some of our companions going arse up and ending in the water. We didn’t hang around as those sorts of small incidents often predicate an equally small domestic disagreement.
We were back for sometime when we realized the full party had not returned, you must remember that the water is extremely shallow here, it is possible to walk back from the reef. It’s unlikely that something serious would happen in this short distance. Unfortunately our mates kayaks had actually filled with water, underneath repairs that consisted of a some material along the keel of the boat had lifted to let the water in. This made the Kayak useless as a vessel and so towing by hand was the answer, a much slower process than paddling.
The evening fun began with our Kiwi bro’s settling in for a sun downer drink and then a group BBQ. On the menu were three legs of lamb and salads we had purchased from deli down the road. Butterflyed and laid flat, the plan was to cook the legs of lamb on a BBQ, the problem was finding a BBQ to cook them on. There were three in the area and all flat plates, the lamb need heat all around. The self designated head cook, and I went to our unit and grabbed our BBQ, once we had flogged a plate from one of the flat BBQ’s, and installed it in the newly acquired BBQ we were ready to throw in the three roasts. We were in business, Kiwi initiative working at its best, BBQ was fantastic.
As an aside note it is okay to take packed meat to Rarotonga, the guys brought in three fillets of beef and three legs of lamb in a cooler box, not problem.
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