Shameful that I think I started writing this post about 2 months ago. I’ve come back to it more than once and perhaps it boils down to the fact that when I am trying to describe the wonders that I see while we snorkel or dive it really is a hard churn for my brain to constantly try to fit what I’m taking in with comparisons that don’t ever seem enough. My mind wants to fit images into known quantities and compare sights to those that I’ve seen before, and while my brain can’t help to do it, it also knows it can’t help but come up a little short. Or maybe I’m just a procrastinator and have gotten rather lax about my posts.
So here is a bit of my adventures from beneath the waves.
I’m enthralled, overwhelmed and wishing I had better words. Why? how are these shapes and colors so myriad? When I think I see a swath of one and then realize there is a mix of pinks and purples, oranges and burgundy, soft taupe and sandy grey. What makes it sensical to have hunter green popping out of a wall next to tendrils of rose? Periwinkle winking at you where you just saw a haze before. There don’t seem to be enough of a lexicon to describe the lavenders versus lilac versus misty moors. (Have I ever even seen a moor? Is that just a lavender field in Jane Austen prose? I guess it’s just a field, but in my mind it always seems purple. Sunken fog over a vast expanse. Maybe heather?) But back to the underwater! Craggy pipe organs of white and mint green spiking 2 and 3 feet tall out of the coral wall with white and grey speckled worms snaking their sides. I definitely have gotten more comfortable with the plethora of animals (and even corals) that look like snakes. Not to mention my knack of spotting actual sea snakes. Usually the black and white ringed ones. But I try to focus on the bit of fin and tail that most of the creatures usually have that make my phobia be held a bit at bay.
Of creatures we’ve seen, there are just too many to mention. Lion fish have become still an exciting sight but hardly a rarity, barracuda and grouper and tuna are fun spots, I have yet to tire of the rainbow parrot fish, the trigger fish in their many permutations and the angelfish and butterflyfish families. The common schools of black, white and yellow fish seem like friends and the burst of color from a neon cleaner wrass or tang is a delight. The friendly clown fish hiding in their anemones always seems like an exciting and fun hello (thanks Pixar). Speaking of delight, seeing our girls discover these sights is truly one. Alys is a fantastic snorkeler, great eyes and good swimmer, she loves to dive down and get a closer look, examining the tiny Christmas tree shaped anemones in teal and orange and pink that slurp themselves back inside their coral home when we got too close off Olango, or diving down to point out an urchin shell. Marion hasn’t yet developed a huge amount of stamina when it comes to the snorkeling (though I probably wouldn’t either if my mask were constantly getting filled with water or repeatedly being stung by jellyfish). But oh can that girl enjoy the view! Never before have I heard someone talk, yell, sing or exclaim so much through a snorkel. Buoys exclamations of delight ring clear and loud and when she’s just bored you can still understand the lyrics to the Frozen 2 sound track if you try.
I hope I will never forget such sounds and sights with my girls. Or other images that I have gotten to see and I hope will always stick out. One was as we glided along the walls during our dive at Pescador Island: the scenery would change, new bright yellow schools of fish would make way in coordinated dance, and at one point it seemed the whole ledge was draped with feathery pastels hanging down like an extravagant Easter party at Versailles or some other overly festooned fete. Up close the feathers were infinitesimally branching creatures that winnowed themselves to clusters that would surprisingly have a contrasting color on each tip. Red dots at the tips of periwinkle, green at the tips of yellow. The stalks were ridged like a turtles leathery flexible neck and clung to the coral wall like a mushroom.
Near the end of the dive we came up nearer the surface and the sun was shining down and I’m not sure if it was the sun’s light or the natural color of that section or what but BAM: golden! Everything seemed so golden. Like Midas himself had been there. The coppery fish glowed, the coral a haze of ocher. Golden slumbers began playing on loop in my head spliced with Here Comes the Sun. All those breakfast with the Beatles mornings seem to have their influence.
Out in front our homestay in Moalboal may lie the healthiest reef we’ve seen. Expanse after expanse of tiered table coral (acropora), like enormous party platters that are serving aqua mint schools of fish, yellow and blue darts that levitate and peck at the smorgasbord. Branching coral, fuzzy table coral in blues and greens and yellows. A huge ochre coral that looks like an enormous hollow walnut shell-deep and tall with its top sliced off-big enough to fit an adult inside. I’m taken by the giant sea anemones that appear lined with cilia, swaying limbs while the feathery hairs flare with the currents like someone blow drying in a hurry. I have to resist the urge to reach out and feel the longer feathery tendrils that look like they would be furry soft, a fringe on a flappers dress repeated on stalk after stalk undulating weightless. Maybe they would be sticky, embracing, cool like the anemones in the aquarium back home. Maybe they would sting, or just disappear like the other feathery anemones that slip inside their conical homes at the slightest provocation. There’s just too much to see and try to describe. losing battle but I am grateful for it all and am grateful to try to remember it and relive it a little in my recounting.
The Adobo Hobos 