Week 9 June 4th - June 9th
4th June
On Monday 4th June at 10am we arrived in Suwarrow.. To get into the lagoon we had to pick our way through an uncharted pass. Although the water is very clear it was quite hard because the wind was blowing so the water was choppy and the sun was behind the clouds. Suwarrow is one big national park. It is completely uninhabited except for a warden and his family. The warden is here six months of the year and returns to his house in Rarotonga during the cyclone season. The warden lives on the island behind the beach in between the coconut palms. All the islands are covered in coconut palms. Suwarrow is one big atoll. At the moment I can hear the waves breaking over the reef.
The next day we did school and then followed the warden round to a different part of the lagoon where we went for a snorkel. The water was amazingly clear. While we were snorkeling we saw a few sharks and lots of colourful fish.
The following day we went for a snorkel on the east side of the atoll. It was about four miles away. We saw lots of shiny and colourful fish. The coral looked beautiful because it was so colourful and the water around it was Aqua. We saw some sharks and a lot of big fish, one shark was very interested in us and it kept circling the tender. We next went to have a look at the Frigate bird colony, they were living in the mangroves. We couldn’t get in with the tender because it was very shallow so we anchored it further out and snorkelled in. We saw some Frigate bird chicks which were red because they get sun burned before they get there feathers. After we had gone for a snorkel we came back to the boat and went to sleep.
After school the next day Mummy and Daddy went for a dive at the pass while Daisy and I played on the boat.
When they came back we went for a snorkel in a Different part of the lagoon. We saw lots of fish and clams. I saw two fish swimming around and knocking into clams.
Later that day we went over to the warden again. We gave them some gifts, and a union Jack with a picture of a kangaroo and kiwi and our names, as they put up on their wall flags left by visiting boats.
They gave us two carvings on some mother of pearl, one had two turtles on and one had a rose, they were then polished, and were really nice. On the way back to the tender we found a sea urchin shell, it was purple. When we got back to the boat we had supper and then we did the washing up, after which we went to bed.
The next day we went over to Entrance Island to have a snorkel. We saw some fair size groupers, some baby sharks and lots of small colourful fish. I went for my first ever dive off Entrance island where I saw lots of coral and fish. On Entrance island we found lots of rock pools, in the rock pools we saw a moray eel which was chasing all of the crabs. After we had seen the moray eel we got back into the tender and went back to the boat. I went for a windsurf in the shallows. I went from the shallows up wind into the middle of the lagoon where there was more wind and waves.