Contributed by: filbert Thursday, November 19 2009 @ 07:37 AM CST
Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert
Part Six
November 9 (Monday, Day 12, Port Victoria and Praslin, Seychelles, continued) –
Snorkeling at Coral Island:
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| Ray, just as soon as we got into the water |
More after the jump . . .
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| Parrotfish? |
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| Trumpetfish |
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| Things started a bit slowly, actually |
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| Don’t stand on the coral! |
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| Parrotfish? |
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| Rush hour |
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| Phil likes the yellow and blue fish for some reason |
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| These guys were out in force, too |
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| The Death Turtle |
Phil got very excited about seeing the turtle and tried to mimic its behavior by breathing seawater. (ed: Turtles breathe air. So does Phil. Turtle obviously thought “stop breathing my air!” Phil, being ecologically minded, foolishly tried to obey the Death Turtle.) He quickly found out that humans are not supposed to breathe water. He then abruptly said “I want to go back to the boat” so we started swimming back to the catamaran.
Drama. Tension. Danger!
We got along side of the catamaran (the ladder was in the front so we still had ½ of the length to go) and he stopped and reached up to grab one of the plastic/rubber bumper things since he was really starting to cough and gag. Janet yelled up to one of the crew to throw down a life ring and he did. Janet managed to get the horseshoe life preserver thing around Phil’s chest and Janet was kind of pulling him toward the front of the catamaran. By then another guest swam up and took off Phil’s mask and helped. Phil was okay other than he kept coughing and spitting. Janet was quite worried since his spit was red and bloody. We finally got him to the ladder and he scooted up the steps.
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| Death Turtle vs. Snookums |
Janet then went up and realized that Phil had a bloody nose. That relieved her a great deal since that explained all of the bloody spit that he was coughing out! He was able to stand up after 1 minute and other than continuing to cough for the rest of the day, he survived. He told everyone that breathing salt water is NOT recommended. That wasn’t the end of our excitement on this shore excursion, though. It was unfortunately the end of the fun for a little while though.
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| The Death Turtle flees |
Our catamaran had one of the four Regent shore excursion employees on it. The woman stood up and said “I hate to have to tell you this, but Mr. Moore on the ship just died so I need to go back.” Janet was very confused as to why she would tell us about a dead man on our ship and then Janet realized that Mr. Moore actually was on our snorkel trip and was on the other excursion boat–the catamaran anchored right next to us. His wife was there, too. The Regent employee said the died from a heart attack but I’m not sure that can be determined within 5 minutes of death. Couldn’t it have been drowning or maybe some kind of stinging fish or something? A water ambulance (really just a fast little boat) came to get the corpse. When all of that was done, the three catamarans sailed back to the dock and we got on the tender to return to the Voyager. That was a first for us – a death on our shore excursion. It put a bit of a damper on the rest of the day, as you can well imagine.
They say “never turn your back on the sea.” Phil got away with it, this time. The other guy didn’t, apparently. Kinda makes you think. So, the lesson of the day is: You don’t know for whom the turtle of death tolls. (Phil deals with strong emotional situations with humor. OK, he deals with most situations with humor. Usually very odd humor. He shrugs as he types this, which is every bit as tricky as it sounds.)
Phil was still coughing a lot so we ended up ordering room service and went to bed by 8 PM. He also took a cough suppressant. We got to set our clocks back another hour, too. All in all, it was an exciting and somewhat sobering day.
Next: Albatrosses? Or boobies?