Nighttime snorkeling is da bomb!
I thought it would be cold and scary but actually it wasn’t (most of the time). The first half an hour was mostly broken coral and sand with not much wildlife, and I thought it was going to be a bust. Then we decided to head out deeper and bumped into a bunch of other people doing the same thing as us but with much better gear including very bright torches. We then spent the next 20 minutes trying to escape a very persistent snorkeler who wouldn’t leave us alone – eventually we confronted him and he was very surprised to discover that a) we weren’t part of his group and b) we weren’t German. After he wandered off into the dark things improved markedly. Straight away we spotted a sting ray swimming towards us. I freaked out immediately, and tried to hide behind my daughter – difficult because she’s smaller than me. By the time she wrestled the torch off me, the ray had vanished. We had much better success with my daughter in charge – big schools of fish, and an enormous puffer fish, before we gave up and swam back to the resort around 10pm. Awesome.
My daughter has since reminded me of a snorkeling trip we did many years ago in Owhiro Bay in Wellington. We came across a sting ray, and my daughter immediately scrambled onto my back in a panic, so that I almost drowned as well as nearly getting barbed by the ray. So, what goes around, comes around! It’s the circle of life.