I can snorkel!

I know, I know, everyone else learns by the time they're 10, but I didn't, and now at the age of 30 I've finally got the knack of it. If you knew me in 2004 (and I don't think many people who read this blog actually did), you might know that I had an attempt at snorkelling when Rob and I went to the Maldives, and it didn't go very well. I had never done it before, a boat took us a little way away from the resort to a nearby reef and the sea was quite choppy. I couldn't get my mind around the fact that I had to breathe through my mouth, not my nose, and there was no time to learn because the group of people we were with were already swimming off. I got a bit panicked, swallowed a load of sea water and ended up swimming straight back to the boat. Rob came with me because he couldn't see much anyway, being short-sighted and not having his glasses on, so we just sat on the boat and waited till the others came back.

Yesterday, however, we went a little way into the water, where we could still stand up, and Rob taught me how to snorkel. It still took me a few attempts before I could put my head under water, breathe through my mouth and resist the urge to hold my nose, but once I got the hang of it, I loved it! The only trouble was, there isn't much to see in the waters just off the beach here - there was an old tyre on the sea bed a little way out, with lots of green stuff growing on it and a load of fish swimming around, which was great to see, but once the novelty had worn off that, there wasn't really anything else. There is a reef about 20 minutes' walk down the beach, but what I really want to do is go back to the Maldives and see all the stuff I should have seen last time!

Another positive is that I haven't got a mosquito bite for 4 days now. I think it might be related to the fact that there hasn't been any rain since Friday either, and there's not much moisture in the air. It does mean that the temperature is much hotter during the day, so we tend to go inside for a few hours at lunchtime then venture out again around 3pm, but I'd rather that than be constantly itching and come home covered in bites, like last year!