Day 142: Longboat Snorkeling

Post from Tim:

We took the snorkel trip from hell.

The boatman picked us up that morning half an hour late. His longboat was old - not antique old, but poorly maintained old. The bright paint that had once circled the bow was now faded and peeling. Small holes in the hull leaked steady geysers of water that the boatman's assistant constantly bailed with a makeshift bucket. Prehistoric millipede water bugs skulked around in schools under the damp beams of the hull. The short fabric roof that would protect us in the event of rain seemed to have only one purpose on a nice day - to prevent anyone over 5 feet tall from sitting up straight.

We pulled off the beach, rounded a cape, and escaped the tall waves of the ocean by boating down a protected channel. One hour went by. Another hour went by. We entered open water and cruised for another hour. By the time we reached the first snorkel area, two people in the boat were seasick.

Ack! The coral was dead. Nothing much to see here, but a few colorful fish attracted by the chum vomited by our two seasick friends. We swam to a gorgeous beach with nothing on it but a wooden fisherman's house and waited to go to the next area.

We snorkeled again under the sheer cliff of a limestone island, anchoring in shaded deep green water. This dive was everything the other dive wasn't. The limestone wall plunged 10 meters under the surface. I dove in, went straight to the bottom, and floated up slowly admiring the view. Beautiful - the amazing coral formations, bright colors, unusual fish. Everything snorkeling should be.

My rapture ended when I returned to the boat.

Another three hours back - or so I thought. But low tide had reduced our route home to a mud flat. (You would think a local boatman would know these things.) After some discussion in Thai between the boatman and his assistant, we headed into the mangroves. The boatman didn't know the area and quickly got lost. We drove into dead ends, took arbitrary turns, and asked some fishermen in the mud flats directions. It was approaching dark when I saw the assistant wave the gas container in front of the boatman in an expression that said, "We are almost out." We didn't have lights on the boat. Navigating in the dark was nearly impossible and we hadn't passed another boat in an hour. Just as I'd resigned myself to spending the night in the boat, we approached a familiar area. Another 30 minutes later, we mutinied and made the boatman drop us off on the town dock instead of at our guesthouse farther away.

We had snorkeled for an hour, but spent 10 hours on the trip. We were done, and nothing would keep us on the boat any longer.

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