Christi awoke feeling brave. “I can do it. I can clean the fish” she chanted to herself. She pulled the fish out of the refrigerator and pulled out an instruction book. Hmmm”¦. How do I know if I follow the small fish directions or the flat fish directions? It isn’t clear how small “small fish” is. She grabbed a different instruction book, but it was no clearer. Both books used technical language that she couldn’t comprehend. This was a desperate situation. Time was ticking on the  fish freshness factor. Fortunately, Patagonia had arrived from the north side this morning and anchored next to us. They run a fly fishing resort in Patagonia, Chile, so we knew they were the right people to help us in our time of need. We made a mayday call to them. They laughed and sent the boys er, young men — right over to help. The guys each did a fish as a demo, and Christi did the last two herself. She didn’t even faint, not even when she accidentally poked the eyes with her bare fingers.

We threw the scales and guts and heads over as we worked. Within seconds of the first guts hitting the water, the back of the boat was surrounded by dozens of fish, mostly the black with the little blue dots, and some circling sharks. The fish fought viciously over each scrap. It was amazing to watch. Christi was a little nervous about falling in knowing the sharks had smelled blood. When it was all over, Christi was covered in fish scales.

Once the fish were successfully gutted, we had a lot of time to kill before the incoming tide. Yesterday we had gone on an outgoing tide, which can be dangerous. We started near the restaurant and went only about half way through the pass, wanting to stay very clear of the ocean. Today we were going to go on an incoming tide, which meant we would go all the way to the edge of the pass at the ocean and ride the current all the way into the restaurant. Maybe the reason we didn’t think it was the best snorkeling ever was because we see it all.

Eric decided to give Christi SCUBA lessons to kill time. He took her over to the shallow water by the restaurant to teach her all the safety basics and emergency procedures.

All went well in the shallow area, but when we moved to deeper water she had trouble with her ears again. Sigh. It looked like the hotel had several guests come in that were keeping Raymond occupied.

When the tide was right, we joined the family next door and went out. The ride was really quite fun. We went from the edge of the pass, around the corner of the restaurant, and quite a ways into the lagoon towards where Kosmos is anchored, so it was a long ride. We felt like we were flying because the current pushed us so fast. Like in Apataki, this pass has calm eddies along the shores and extremely turbulent water in between. In the reef we were in the eddie, but once we rounded the corner of the lagoon, we were in turbulent water, and it felt like we were going through rapids. It turns out that by far the best section of coral and sea life is the part we had snorkeled the day before. The scenery the rest of the ride paled in comparison to that little stretch of reef. We only did the pass once because the sun was getting low in the sky. We took much more notice of the little red fish in the reef today than we did yesterday.

Christi baked the little reef fish for dinner and they were really quite good. After dinner, we went over to Patagonia and hung out with them for a while. They are neat people and we enjoyed our time with them.