<a href="/serendipity/" title="Robert's Ramblings" If I talk about coral gardens there are three ways the conversation might go. The first, that corals are in the ocean and so you must find them everywhere. The second, that corals are in the tropical oceans and so you only get to see them in exotic locations. The third … Read more
<a href="/serendipity/" title="Robert's Ramblings" Twenty metres below us the pair just hung there on the bottom, motionless, a strange stillness in an ever moving ocean. A silhouette against the white sand, too far down to make out their detail, not so deep as to be hidden from our gaze. Almost as if they wanted our … Read more
<a href="/serendipity/" title="Robert's Ramblings" ‘Play with me’, the whale suggested as he circled the girl closer and closer. How do you play with a creature 400 times your diminutive frame? ‘Play with me’, the whale intoned with a soundless expression and an oh so gentle nudge. How do you not panic, how do you trust … Read more
<a href="/serendipity/" title="Robert's Ramblings" And this little piggy went ‘we, we, we, we, all the way home’! While in Vava’u we saw pigs, lots and lots of pigs everywhere. In fact the maximum speed of 70Kph is almost redundant as everyone drives as if pigs both large and small are about to dart out across … Read more
<a href="/serendipity/" title="Robert's Ramblings" When ever I come across a cave, be it on the side of a cliff, deep in the ocean or perhaps somewhere right in the middle of those two worlds I wonder, ‘what lives in there?’ and feel an urgent need to explore. Swallows Cave, on the Island of Kapa, Vava’u, … Read more
<a href="/serendipity/" title="Robert's Ramblings" ‘Tag me if you can!’, a school yard taunt remembered from long ago. Yet here we are again playing that game of dare, chase and tag on a scale un-imagined from a landlocked childhood. Who would have thought we would encounter Humpback whales both adept and eager to play our boyhood … Read more
<a href="/serendipity/" title="Robert's Ramblings" Sometimes I wonder just who was checking out who! No sooner had we arrived here and two large humpback whales appeared about 100m away. As soon as we realised they were heading straight for our boat there was a mad scramble for masks, fins and cameras. They came closer; 50m, 25m, … Read more
<a href="/serendipity/" title="Robert's Ramblings" The the big male far below me had already started blowing bubbles on his last descent. As his stream of bubbles ascended from below it expanded and divided over and over like some roiling cauldron until the ocean became a sea of bubbles telling of his progress far beneath me. As … Read more
<a href="/serendipity/" title="Robert's Ramblings" ‘Don’t go in there’ he said as he swam back from the gates. Unspoken, we both perceived the gauntlet drift downward to the ocean floor below. For a while we watched and we waited until during a brief lull in the waves we quietly slipped through. It was so intense in … Read more
<a href="/serendipity/" title="Robert's Ramblings" We followed these three humpback whales on the surface for a while as they played their own games, indifferent to our attempts to get their attention. On one particular drop the three dived in unison and came to rest around 20m below the surface where for a while they remained in … Read more