The island that we are staying on is tiny. It takes about 5 minutes to walk from one end to the other. There’s not much to do here except swim, snorkel, dive, and sunbathe. On the first night, we walked around the island and oriented ourselves. We took a quick dip in the pool to practice swimming again.

Valerie had initially considered scuba diving around the island, but she’s been a bit stuffy lately and thinks she would have too much trouble equalizing to successfully dive. (She may have caught whatever I picked up on the last day of the cruise.) For the last few days, we have been snorkeling in the house reef around the island. The island is encircled by a breakwater-type concrete wall with 6 entry/exit points for snorkelers and divers. Within the wall, the water is very warm and shallow and there isn’t much to see as much of the coral is covered by sand and the fish don’t seem to like sandy coral. Just outside the wall there are between 5 and 30 meters of relatively shallow reef before a steep cliff-like drop-off to the deeper reef below. This shallow reef is where all the fish seem to hang out. We’ve seen a whole bunch of colorful fish as well as sharks and rays. I think Valerie has been very happy with the snorkeling on this island.

We have snorkeled out of all 6 of the marked exit points. The exits on the windward side of the island lead to big fish (about half human sized) and rays, but the water is choppy which makes it hard to snorkel. The water on the leeward side is less choppy and has a large reef full of smaller fish, but the exit is very shallow during low tide which can make it difficult to access. The exit near the dive shop in the middle (lengthwise) of the island is the easiest to access, but the shallow reef is smallest at this point. (This area is probably better for divers).

When we’re not in the ocean, one annoyance is that the resort only provides a 500mL bottle of water per person per day. If you want to drink more than that, you have to buy bottled water or other beverages. (The resort recommends against drinking the tap water, even if boiled.) Our kind housekeeping attendant has noticed Valerie’s voracious appetite for water and refills our mini-bar with water every night. We’re accumulating quite a collection of empty water bottles in our room.