Instructor - Maria McKay
Day 1:
We arrived in Lanzarote earlier today and decided straight away that we would go snorkelling somewhere. We decided to head over to the south west coast of the Island to an area called Papa Gayo. This area had two beaches, one really big and busy, with the other being nice and small with only a few people. Today we decided to go to the bigger one. Little did we know it was also a nudist beach, I kept the slacks on.
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| Old watch tower at the top of the beach. |
We decided to get in straight away and start snorkelling along the coast line. This was by far the clearest water I was ever snorkelling in. About 10m visibility at least. We didn't see much life at the start except for this school of silvery coloured fish with bright yellow eyes. They had no fear whatsoever and would swim in and around you without getting scared. After doing some research I think these were called 'striped large eyed beams'. Easily recognisable by yellow eyes and yellow on its back.
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| Striped Large eyed beams. |
After continuing on we also came across loads of sea cucumbers. I've only ever seen one when snorkelling in Kerry but there were easily 50 here. They get their names from looking like a cucumber with a soft leathery body
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| Sea Cucumber. |
Day 2:
Today we decided to come back to Papa Gayo but this time we went to the other smaller beach. This was amazing as it wasn't as crowded and the water was still as clear. Today we went out to a small reef just out from the beach where we saw two species of really colourful fish. One of these fish was called an 'Ornate Wrasse'. This fish looks like a glowing arrangement of neon lights.
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| Ornate Wrasse |
The other really colourful fish we saw was called a 'canary damselfish'. This was by far my favourite that I have seen on this holiday. It was mainly black but had ultra violet tips on its fins. These fish were also very comfortable around us.
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| Canary Damselfish |
After exploring this side of the reef we decided to head even further out towards the other side of the reef. This was amazing and full of life out there. It actually became quite intimidating as there was a minefield of black sea urchins of all sizes.
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| Heading for a look. |
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| Soon turned around. |
After admittedly getting scared of being on lowish water around these bad boys we decided to head back with our tails between our legs.
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