I can hardly believe I’ll be able to tell everything that’s happened since I wrote last. But if my memory serves…

My blogging and need for a “bucket bath” meant we left late to go to the museum. Sarita (ANET staff) went with John and me to the anthropological museum. Oddly organized, it’s sort of a museum to the way museums used to be. But we still managed to learn a good deal about the original 5 tribes of the islands, though less about their contact history (that is, when they met outsiders). Afterwards, we had lunch at a wonderful resort overlooking the sea and then returned to the base, because my 3 am arising caught up with me. Maybe we’ll go to our other destinations, at least Cellular Jail (where the British put Indian political prisoners and criminals before Indian Independence in 1947) before we go to the airport today. Kids, especially boy kids, apparently are thoroughly engaged by that history and experience.

When we returned and after a nap, it was time to walk a nearby beach to examine the giant upturned tree roots from the tsunami for banded sea kraits–a venomous water snake who uses them to rest and nest.

We climbed in the back of the ANET truck and road across to the beach. The stars were astonishingly bright without much city light, and we toddled on down the beach, torches beaming into the air, along the sand to catch the ghost crabs scuttling to safety in the water from their munchings at the tide-line litter, and out into the water. The tsunami had a huge effect on these islands; the epicenter was southeast. Land sank and was permanently inundated with sea water, which killed trees, some of them giants. These roots –20 feet in diameter, some of them, lay on the beach like giant brooches, patterned by their intricate root systems. And into the crevices of these, we saw 7 banded sea kraits (Saul, I’m told you’d eat your heart out to see one of these creatures, as they’re so rare and herpetologists drool to see them). They were lovely — black and white bands and a wedge tail for swimming. They are venomous, but they have tiny mouths meant to kill in small holes in coral reefs, mainly, so there are almost no reported human deaths–possibly a fisherman who pulled one into a net and got bitten in the shallow skin between index finger and thumb.

The next morning, it was up early to snorkel. We drove into the Mahatma Gandhi National Seashore and took a boat to another boat with a shallower draw — the ANET boat that then took us to the reef.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were in a beautiful turquoise cove, and I couldn’t wait to get in the water. They gave us fins, maskes, and snorkels, told us where we could swim, and I was off. One dip of my face-mask later, I was ensnared in the underwater world of the reef. A group of 12 or so giant hump-headed parrot fish — six or seven feet long — stayed with us for most of the morning. My video from my GoPro is pathetic, but I include it for those brave enough to risk a few seconds of their lives.

Hump-headed Parrot Fish

Luckily, Umeed Mistry, my host Arzu’s brother (perched in profile in the photo), is the Dive Instructor here as well as a fine photographer (he and Tasneem, who runs the center, just won a national award for nature photography!) also used my camera, so I’ll add a piece of his footage later.

I was lost in the world of the reef all morning, only surfacing to drink water and, finally, to eat some fruit on the beach with the others — John and Geetha had been “playing pebbles in the surf” while I blissed out on snorkeling. During one last foray, it started to rain — a wonderful sensation of being in one world and being tapped by the other to return. We returned to the dive center, showered, and came back to ANET to nap.

After dinner, about 8:30, one of the scientists, Bhanu, took me out to the mangroves for a night walk. It was at the limit of my trust, since I had no idea where we were. But she did, and we wandered through the sand and muck and roots to see dog-headed snakes, a white eel, and crabs crabs crabs.

Finally, to bed, exhausted, but ready for the new day, when I’d decided to scuba — a lifelong dream about to be fulfilled.