June 9, 2012

HAFA ADAI!

Yes, yes, I am back and I know you are all happy I am:)  I ended up going back over to Managaha Island last weekend with Audra and two other teachers.  They took their after school "Drama Club" students over there for swimming and lunch.  There were 14 kids, some parents and me.  Some of the kids had never been to the island even though they have lived on Saipan their whole life.  They were thrilled with the experience of taking the ferry boat over there and having a little island to explore.  We rode over on this funky ferry called The Jambalaya trying to look like it is straight out of New Orleans floatin' on down the Mississippi.....gotta love Saipan!  I rode on the bottom section just in case it tipped over.  The dock is at Smiling Cove which is very close to the apartment so I will be sailing on the Jambalaya a lot while I'm here.

I snorkeled on the North Side of Managaha for awhile where all the Japanese tourists go.  I was at the very tip of the Northwest side of the island away from the crowds.  If you get in the mix of all the Japanese swimming around they snorkel right over you which isn't very much fun. The picture below is looking across at the Japanese tourist.  You aren't supposed to feed the fish but they all do.  They have as much fun snorkeling as I do but are a bit more aggressive about it.

 Isn't the fish in the middle beautiful (I like the blue fish too)?  This was the first time I've seen this one.  I couldn't believe how colorful he was. He was posing for me too to make sure I got his best side.  He didn't swim away like most of them do but appeared to be pretty tame.  Probably because of all that food the Japanese tourist feed him:

    

 Here is the blue star fish I told you about in my earlier post.  They are so pretty just hanging out on the bottom of the ocean.  You can enlarge the picture by clicking on it and see the pattern on it's legs.  My friend said when you pick them up they are hard and stiff but I won't touch anything because I don't want to hurt them.

 I didn't see this brown fish right away.  He was swimming by some brown coral and blended right in.  I call them the Rambo fish since they are so well camouflaged




















I see these fish everywhere I go.  Some are more colorful than others.  They
must get fed a lot too because they are pretty tame and always come right up to you looking for a handout.  I've even had them nibble at my fingers.

This picture is of what I call the "fairy" fish.  If you look at the coral clump on the upper left side of the picture you can see all kinds of little blue fish swimming around.  When you aren't near them they swim in a school above the coral but when you get too close to them they swim into the coral and hide.  I have fun watching them!

Another cool experience I had was running across some old WWII wreckage.  There was a huge gun barrel and what looked like part of an old ship.  Plus there was a tank or something like it because it had the track on it instead of wheels.  Someone told me it used to be sitting on the other side of the island but they moved it to the east side to promote growth of the coral that has been destroyed and was a conservation effort too.  There was a beautiful big flat shaped fish swimming around in it that I called the "bully" fish because he kept chasing all the other fish away from where he was eating.  He had all different colors of blue and yellow stripes.  Of course I had used up all my film so didn't get a picture of him.  I saw some other pretty good sized fishies there as well.  I decided to swim further out to the other reef areas and came across some red fish that had huge black spots where their eyes were.  I think their real eyes were below the spots and the spots were a scare tactic for other fish.  They were beautiful.  Then I looked across the way and saw a really big fish (about 4-5 feet long and realized it was a shark.  I high tailed it back to shore and wasn't followed.  Guess he wasn't hungry!

When we headed back to the dock to catch the boat back to Saipan we had some time to kill.  The kids spotted an eel swimming around by the dock so we all sat and watched it for awhile.  It was grey. A  pretty reddish colored one swam over and entertained us too.  The kids loved the show and so did I.  Was really cool watching them.  We saw a couple crabs scooting about too.

I will be putting all my other photos from this snorkeling day on my FB Saipan 2012 photo album so stop by and look at them there.  My little underwater camera works pretty darn good!

My next blog will be about the Agriculture Fair I went to with Audra and Lori and also about different foods and the grocery stores here on the island.  Here is a sneak peak of one of my favorite finds.........it really tastes like bacon too:)  They have several different flavors of Spam.  My mission is to try them all!

Remember, be nice to each other and live for today!  Peace Out