Snorkeling, Koh Tao
Thick redness flowing from my pinky, again. There are two basics you should know before going snorkeling around here. First, quality of the equipment is paramount. A shoddy mask will leave you blind with salty water poured in the eyes (a bee itch for contact wearers), and a faulty snorkel (the breathing tube) will drown you. I had both happen the first day out. The mask had only a single flap fitting the face; of course water was going to get in. Where it comes in contact with your face, the mask should have two flaps that create a suction effect and thus prevent leakage. The snorkel was missing a thin rubber stopper which normally covers the gaping hole at the mouthpiece end. I was spitting water after my first “breath”. There’s no substitute for quality equipment in decent repair.
Second, if entry into the water is from a rocky boulder-strewn shore as opposed to a beach, getting out to and returning from the snorkeling area are the most dangerous parts. Underwater rocks are extremely slippery, and often studded with unmerciful, razor-sharp shells of crustaceans living on the interface of water and air. Coupled with the inexorable force of the tide throwing your body in all directions, totally unbalanced, they are a recipe for nasty, deep cuts that won’t stop bleeding. Shoes must be worn! A place sheltered from strong tidal activity - waves gently buffeting, not slamming the rocks - should be chosen, preferably with a clear jump off from dry rock into deep water. Be very careful with the hands and feet when around rocks in the water. Merely brushing up against the spikey armor as part of a swimming stroke can leave a flurry of raw, bloody scratches!
It was not without a smug feeling of vengeance that I observed Aow and Boo with hammer and chisel, chipping the suckers off the boulders they have made their home, smashing, breaking the malevolent shells open and extracting the small tasty culprits - ugsome oysters - from within. Ha! To be fried for karmic returns!
The undersea panorama is magnificent; quite as Tom said, it is like swimming in an aquarium, only better. Once the inscrutible forces dominating the dangerous shoals have been surmounted (I do not say “conquered”), the frightening realm of utter powerlessness left behind, I find an amazing freedom in the water not felt before. A steady stream of breath available by my apparatus, I fly just under the surface of the water, buoyantly suspended and omnidirectionally mobile.
I spy about five dark frilly sea cucumbers (from Wikipedia: “They have the peculiar adaptation of expelling their internal organs when startled by a potential predator. These organs can then be regrown.”) sleeping or otherwise idling on the floor. Dozens of varieties of fish play around, riding the current in and out, jab their faces into coral crannies nibbling food; fluorescent turquoise dots, or schools of thousands of glimmering thumb-length streaks flowing by all in the same direction, a slowly migrating, acrobatic beam of light. Or rain of stars. Some fish make known they are tropical; their dull scales are assymetrically painted with an assortment of reds, greens, blues, and intermediary colors. Classic kite-like deals, prominently striped yellow black white flit around ruddy head-shaped coral mounds with maze brains exposed. After them disappears a fish, suited in a red and blue alternating horizontal weave, with silly push-button eyes. Rotund eruptions of flat-shaded polygons appear from the foreshortened horizon. And … a frosted shrubbery! I float above it all. Plasic pinecone seaweed sways gently, its ugly bulbous mass - something you’d set your lasers on in Gradius - looking almost graceful.
The water is so clear precisely because there is no fine-grained sand to be whipped up. Boo took me to the shore of a nearby beach, around the boulder-tumbled bend that upwards culminates into dense buzzing jungle; it is easiest to circumnavigate by water. She is awarded a wide gash on her heel for her efforts - shelled again! The glassy beach has but roughly pounded pebble grit as sand; I wouldn’t dive for a volleyball on the scratchy surface “nohow”. Yet some diehard beach babes have stretched themselves out and attempt to sun themselves in the waning afternoon rays, no doubt still potent enough to burn a shadow in unsuspecting hide. We hitch a boat back, beaching it on the rocks to make sure we have no more encounters with sharp objects. Enough violence and hurt, stinking mussel-heads!