Snorkeling on Ishigaki!

Yesterday, Joe rented a car for us so that we could drive up to Kabira town on Ishigaki Island to go scuba diving. Thank goodness he speaks Japanese and knows the system! I don't think they would have let Devlin and I rent one... We were given a cute powder-blue Cube to drive, loaded it up, and off we went. 

The entire island of Ishigaki is quite small - you can drive its circumference in about 2 hours, non-stop. And, the speed limit is set in most places to 40-50 km/hour, or about 25-30 mph - so if you sped up some, it'd be about 1-1.5 hours. ;) 

We drove up to Kabira from Ishigaki town, about a 20 minute drive. We found a dive shop and asked them about diving that day. Unfortunately, due to the passing of Typhoon Phanfone, diving was impossible that day. The wind was still whipping around the island, which made it impossible and unsafe to get a dive boat out. The dive owner lady told us that this weather was quite normal for autumn in the islands here, and that another typhoon was due to arrive on Oct. 15 (one day before we are due to fly back to Okinawa, and then to Fukuoka). Hmm, we foresee flight delays...

The beach where we went snorkeling! So many shells

So, after some boo-hooing, we drove further up the coast until we found a random beach access road. As we pulled in, we saw a Japanese couple changing out of wetsuits. Joe jumped out to ask them about snorkeling here, and they said it was great. We ran to see the beach....so gorgeous! Creamy sand and lots and lots of turquoise water, under a warm sun with the warm wind. 

A warning poster of how to go snorkeling, what not to step on, and creatures to avoid (these include sea urchins and Portuguese Man O' War jellyfish)

Joe posing in his wetsuit - off we go snorkeling!

We geared up! This was Devlin and my first time using some of our new gear that we'd bought for the trip. For Pacific Northwest diving, you really need a dry suit (e.g. no water gets in), thick boots, thick gloves, etc. For Okinawa and the rest of the areas we'll be going, you need really thin stuff. We chose to wear just our Lycra suits (a thin jumpsuit that helps to get wetsuits on easier, and also great UV protection), as well as our lightweight hoods, boots, and gloves. Coral can scrape you up pretty bad, and there were also jellyfish and sea urchins around. 

It was fantastic. Tons of sea life, every where we looked. There were bazillions of these little electric-blue fish and lots of other colorful stripey ones. Big, little, tiny - all there. The coral wasn't incredibly colorful, but most of the time we were in about 3 feet of water, maximum. It was low tide when we went out, so a couple of times we had to swim (or walk) across really shallow spots that were less than a foot deep. Pretty hard to swim in, especially with coral right underneath you!

The bright blue fish we saw, and we saw many stripey colorful ones too (picture taken at Ishigaki airport)

We eventually swam over to a gorgeous cove further up the beach. It looked like something from an advertising poster: the blue sky, green tropical jungle, beach, and teal water. The water was deeper there, and as the tide came in, we saw different fish. Larger fish were in this spot of course, in bigger groups, and then on my way back, I saw zillions of little silver fish zipping along in large schools.

We even saw a clownfish family in an anemone! Hello, Nemo. :)  There were three of them - large, medium, and small - mama, papa, and baby. ;)

The surf picked up as the tide came in, so eventually we called it quits. I spent some time collecting shells and coral; the whole beach was basically a shell/coral beach, with lots of fun chunks of coral and shells.

All in all, a fantastic day. Today, we are catching the 10 a.m. ferry to Yonaguni Island, an even smaller island and literally about the farthest point in Japan you can go. Hopefully the weather will permit us to dive! More later, and as the islanders here say, "Ja mata" or "See you later."

With his big eyes, this fish always looked really scared of us...

Another example of the colorful fish we saw :)