Tide Pools in Vatia

Last Saturday I went snorkeling in the tide pools in Vatia. Vatia is located on the north side of the island and to get there you have drive up a giant hill and then back down the other side (this is the same village you have to go to to hike up Mt. Alava). It's unclear whether buses actually go there or not. However, during orientation when we all went on a bus tour of the island, our bus broke down when we were almost to the top of the hill. We had to donate our water so that the bus driver could use it to cool off whatever was smoking under the hood. So anyway we were glad that our friend Dave, who works for the Coast Guard and has a truck, was coming with us and could drive.

Getting ready to climb down the rocks!

To get to the tide pools you have to stop before the village of Vatia at a great look-out spot where there is a sign for the National Park. It's a short hike down to the tide pools from there. It's pretty steep and basically at the end you're just climbing down the rocks. It's a little bit tricky to actually get into the tide pools because periodically big waves crash over the place where you have climb down the slippery rocks into the pools. If we had known how deep it was we probably could have just jumped in instead of climbing down the rocks. We all made it into the tide pools eventually. We waited for a big wave to come and then tried to make it down before another one came. A couple came while while we were still on the rocks so we just had to hang on and close our eyes.

 Once we got into the tide pools, the snorkeling was pretty cool. I took a lot of underwater photos, but only some of them turned out well. (The two photos of me are courtesy of Lauren). I saw an awesome blue fish and got a couple ok pictures but I couldn't get as close as I wanted to.

The cool blue fish

We also saw this cool bivalve mollusc but we weren't sure exactly what it was. It would open and shut if you waved your hand in front of it. I took a video of Lauren's hand making it open and close, but for some reason I couldn't upload it onto my blog :(