Location: Pulau Yanggefo, Raja
We started the day earlier than usual as we were moving to a new anchorage. Everyone was a little bit sad about this because the place we had stayed the night was such a beautiful anchorage. It was incredible how calm and still the conditions were underneath the small islandsa super peaceful way to start the day.
On the way to Palau Yanggefo, our new anchorage, we collected dingy fuel. I was fortunate to be sent on this short adventure. The Petrol station was on top of a very steep hill. As someone who has frequently almost run out of fuel while driving, this didn’t seem like the best place to put it, but at least the fuel cans were empty for the walk-up. The walk back would have been more challenging if it wasn’t for the kindness of the wonderful locals giving us a ride back to the dock. Unfortunately, during the careful handover between the water taxi to Vela, there was a casualty. RIP to one of my flip-flops.
The short passage between Tanjung B and Palau Mansuar was incredible. These are both Hilly jungle-filled islands, with small houses on stilts on the white sand beaches, basically paradise! When we arrived, we did a small tour around the small inlets in the mangroves before deciding on the perfect place to anchor. As well as this being such a surreal place to be in, we got to use a very cool way of mooring the boat. We used two stern lines on the mangroves. This is when we can tie two long lines onto big trees around the inlet as well as use an anchor to hold our position. Pretty COOOOOL.
The reefs around the mangroves looked unbelievable, and it took no time at all for all the students to grab snorkel gear and check it out. While this happened, a couple of staff went to the wreck dive site. Everyone is super excited to dive into it tomorrow. On the snorkel, there were lots of batfish spotted, which inspired today’s squeeze question: In the ultimate battle for air and sea, who would win between TEAM BAT containing a bat and a batfish? VS TEAM PARROT containing a parrot and a Parrotfish. If you want to know the specific bat and parrot species when you are pondering this question, it is the one which you imagining. Clearly, parrots are superior due to their high intelligence, so we finished Squeeze by all saying, ‘ We love parrots.’