Baders On Tour: Moloi Island

Bobo wandered over to our cabin after breakfast and announced that the weather was fine so we'd take a trip over to Moloi island today. We were quite excited about this trip; it's something of a highlight when staying at Rukuruku. Moloi island is in fact a beautiful white sandbank, in the middle of the ocean, that only appears as the high tide subsides. We would have our very own island!

An hour later we were pushing Bobo's boat off from the Rukuruku shore. It was high tide, there was no beach, the water came right up to the edge of the grassy village. Bobo put a line out for Frankie to tow, to try and catch a fish on the way. We made our way slowly out to sea, away from the bay and the surrounding reef that extends out some 100 metres all along the coast and headed west. It was a warm, sunny day and the few clouds as we left Rukuruku soon moved past.

Almost there......

We motored west for over 40 minutes before you could begin to see something - a stripe of light blue set in the dark blue sea in the distance just below the horizon. As we approached, it became lighter, more turquoise, and then in the turquoise you could clearly make out a further sand-coloured stripe within this. Minutes later you could distinguish the splashing of the water as it met across the tiny sandbank from both sides. Perfect timing! We anchored up in shallow water a few metres from what would soon be our island paradise for the day.

Our own paradise island......for the day

The water is like a warm bath!

The waters receded surprisingly quickly, Bobo pointing out for the boys at one end of the island where the basking sharks were moving around lazily.

Bobo showing Frankie the basking sharks

Bobo suggested that we went out for a snorkel while he prepared the picnic lunch. We grabbed our masks and snorkels, and, all our spitting and rubbing routines completed, ventured into the water. It was warm, so warm that you didn't need to make any decision about the moment you were going to " go in", you just gently fell forward and let yourself be enveloped by the sea's warmth. We headed over some shallow coral and towards the edge of the reef. Lots of parrot fish, yellow tailed fusiliers, angel fish, it was very colourful and the best visibility we'd had for a while. We had no fins on so we all swam slowly with our arms, rather than our usual snorkelling practice of holding hands and gently kicking. This meant that when I did see a white tip reef shark, the others were a few metres away and missed it. By the time I'd called them over, it had moved on. The boys practiced their diving from time to time, you could see them having to work pretty hard to descend though, without fins.

Bobo waved and we paddled slowly back. He'd prepared a lovely picnic, even using a conch shell we'd found for the cucumber salad! It felt quite indulgent to be eating on this tiny island in the ocean on such a sunny day. Afterwards, we snorkelled with Bobo - he had his spear with him and it wasn't just for show. He caught three fish in short order which Karin cooked for dinner that evening. One in particular was a coral trout, absolutely delicious.