I have a very wise and kind friend who sent me an email before we left to remind me that I should relax on my vacation and if I didn’t feel like blogging, I shouldn’t blog. I appreciated that advice so much, as I have not had time to blog before today. So I have lots of adventures to impart, but I won’t try to do it all at once.

We have been here since Monday and today is Thursday. Yesterday we moved from our garden bungalow to our over the water bungalow. That turned out to be a bit stressful and the side of my wife I call La Grumpia emerged. We had to pack all our belongings which a bellman came to get at 11 am and then we had to amuse ourselves until 2 pm when the new room would be ready. For some reason we packed our bathing suits instead of wearing them for the three hours and it was hot and humid and we were tired.

We were already in paradise in our garden bungalow and now we are in Uber-Paradise. It’s a little bit like being on a cruise ship in that we are surrounded by water. The water is such amazing different shades of blue and there is a barrier reef a ways out with crashing waves that we can hear, but under and around the bungalow the water is shallow and mostly calm and there are coral and fish everywhere! We have a window in our floor from which we can view fish and we can also see them when we stand on the deck and look into the water. Last night right after the sun had gone down, Mary spotted a small shark, which was very cool even though it was hard to see in the limited light.

Our deck has two chairs and a table that are covered and protected from the sun and then on a lower level, a sort of divan chair for two, which Mary found uncomfortable and I am in love with. Last night the hotel had a Polynesian show with a buffet dinner that cost something close to $100 per person. The food here is SO expensive! We chose to sit on the patio with our leftover food from lunch as well as a tropical fruit alcoholic beverage we bought on our food tour on Tuesday (more about that later.) After dinner, we went inside and watched a Seattle Storm game on my Ipad mini because I could not ge the tv to work with our Fire Stick. Then we went back out on the patio. It was dark, there were pretty lights on the beach near the restaurant, the water lapped against the support beams of our bungalow and further out waves crashed on the reef. To top it all off, we could hear the music from the Tahitian show and it was very good music, including some amazing drumming. Eventually, Mary went back inside and listened from the bed but I stayed in the cushy chair and listened to the entire show in the dark. It was pretty magical. I think we both had a better time than we would have if we were in the restaurant.

This resort is very secluded and there is no way for us to get anyplace without transportation, but I bought us a bag of fritos and a bag of mixed nuts on the ferry, we’ve been purloining a bit of food at breaskfast every morning, and we bought breadfruit chips (amazingly wonderful) and some pineapple on our food tour on Tuesday. In the mornings we eat a little snack first thing, then snorkel, shower, and go to breakfast, which is a buffet included in our rate.

Though we are on a lagoon, it has quite a current, which I’ve never experienced while snorkeling. On Tuesday, our tour guide recommended that we swim out to some buoys, where he said the best snorkeling is, and then float down to the over the water bungalows. I am currently rehabbng two frozen shoulders and they are not very happy when I use my arms to swim, so, using only my legs, I quickly discovered that it was impossible for me to get very far out in the water at all, due to the current. So we floated towards the bungalows, saw amazing fish and the most beautiful coral I’ve ever seen and then, as we neared the bungalows, Mary asked me if I wanted to go in and I said I would like to swim to the end of the bungalows and then come in. Mary just looked at me and swam away in the opposite direction and I was annoyed and swam anyway to the end of the bungalows, where the tide was very strong and I found there was no way I could get back to shore without employing my arms. I found it very terrifying, though in reality at any moment I could have climbed up a ladder onto someone’s bungalow patio. That would have been very uncool, of course, and I never even considered it. I just panicked, because I have never before felt out of control when snorkeling. Also, I thought that lagoon meant calm waters, but apparently that was an erroneous assumption. I did make it back to shore with some very hard swimming. I was pleasantly surprised the next day when my injured shoulders did not bark at me; instead the backs of my arms were the good kind of sore, when you have worked the muscles hard.

Anyway, I learned my lesson and stuck very close to Mary yesterday morning. We also discussed it. In my view, she had asked me a question, ignored me, and swam away. In her view, because I am swimming with a full-face snorkel, which is amazing but also makes me look like Darth Vadar, she asked me a question, I started at her blankly, so she decided to swim away. When my mask is on she can neither hear anything I say nor see my face. Yesterday I did not attempt to get anywhere. We just floated to the area right before the bungalows, then went into the shore and walked in the water up the beach back to our garden bungalow. With this method, there are great areas of coral and also areas of nothing but sand and no fish at all. Also, we were wearing water shoes rather than flippers, so whenever we came to a really great area, we were powerless to hang out there as the current just dragged us along on the path of its choice.

So yesterday afternoon we went to the dive shop and borrowed some fins. They are free of charge and for that reason I didn’t pack fins, which take up a lot of space. This morning, after our little snack we climbed down the ladder of our bungalow and were immediately in a fish paradise. We didn’t even have to leave the bungalow, but we did. The poles of the bungalows are covered in coral, so there are fish EVERYWHERE. It is also very shallow in places, which scares Mary but I love it because the fish are all around me and I can see them all so clearly. Eventually we swam back to our bungalow, climbed up the ladder, rinsed ourselves with the outdoor sprayer, and then Mary took a shower while I lay in the sun in my new favorite chair, completely covered from head to toe. We had a lovely breakfast. I have had something two days in a row called fromage blanc. It seems exactly like yogurt, but the waitress confirmed it is cheese and not yogurt. They have plain yogurt here, which is often so hard to find in a hotel, but it has a weird consistency and I’m not a fan. I chose half of a funny looking fruit that neither of us had any idea what it was. It was extremely sweet and delicious, and I later learned it was passionfruit. This was my breakfast: sausage, hash browns, tropical juice mixture, croissant (magnifique), baguette with passion fruit and a soft cheese that may have been goat cheese, pineapple, and fromage blanc.

When we got back to the room it was all cleaned up and now we are lounging about with a plan to do NOTHING all day, except write, read, snorkel, eat, doze, watch another Storm game, etc. etc. There is much I haven’t told you yet,so I will possibily do a second, maybe even third entry today.