Sunday 2 October Snorkelling & diving at Champagne Beach

Champagne beach

The water in champagne beach is pure invitation to jump in. Yesterday afternoon after we'd done our fish / fruit trade we went for a snorkel around the boat and ended up swimming to the beach. What a beautiful beach to walk on! It crunched like fresh snow. Backing the beach are open sided huts used by the local ladies to sell their goods when the cruise ships come in. they weren't going to bother for us and a few day trippers so the huts were empty except for a sow and her piglets and a herd of charolais cattle.
Reading the diving guide book Oso Blanco had given us we found there were 3 dive sites on the big island, Lanthu, a mile out in the bay. We had the choice of a wall dive on the south side of the island or a canyon wall on the east and a coral garden on the west end. Our first choice was the wall. Today conditions were flat with only a breathe of wind to waft of wind to disturb the dinghy which we managed to anchor on a small ledge. There wasn't much life or rich coral on the wall but the visibility was incredible and there's always a chance something big would emerge out of the blue. Still it was a good dive.

we traded a wahoo fish for veg with villagers

In the afternoon the sun was shining on the coral garden on the western end of the island. This time we left the dinghy anchored in a shallow sand patch and swam out to the drop off. Incredible healthy soft and hard corals and a black tip as we dropped in. We kept it shallow to make the most of the sun through the water as we looked at the reef. It was a surprisingly very good dive; a turtle did a swim past and we had 7 juvenile grey reef sharks above us when we were in 6m of water. They were oblivious to our presence under them because one swam into my bubbles and jumped away like he'd been hit by an electric shock. Our last sighting of a big boy was a 2m silver torpedo fish, not a barracuda or a tuna, possibly a barred mackerel or a wahoo each rare visitors in shallow waters. We get a great buzz from these unexpected, surprisingly good dives. It puts those speculative dives into perspective. It's why we do it – you never know what you're going to find.