Our Travels In Japan (and other places): Snorkeling and Biking on Aka Island

It rained all night last night and we were afraid we'd not have great weather today, but boy were we wrong. After our convenience store (excuse me "Supermarket") breakfast we took a walk down to the shore to check it out.

Oh, that's right. THAT'S why we came here

The clouds had lifted and it was a gorgeous, sunny day and great scenery all around. You can't see it in these pictures, but the water out here is pure blue (white sand bottom) and SO clear you can see clear to the ocean floor even 20-30 feet deep. More on that later. We had set up to do a snorkeling excursion in the afternoon, so we had the morning to kill.

Walking over to the "Supermarket" we stocked up on food for the next few days and walked behind it to "Rental Shop Shou". It was, um, a rental shop. We rented a few bikes to explore the island chain. The bikes were...mamacharis. What is a mamachari?

This beautiful thing

They actually kept their rental gear in great shape. These bikes were well tuned, oiled and, clean. Not an easy task on an island with all the salt in the air. Of course, being in Japan, to say it did not fit me would be an understatement. My knees hit the handlebars when I tried to pedal (I had to squeeze myself fully between the handlebars to ride at all) and I had to sit almost where the rear basket is just to fit. I'm sure I looked athletic and graceful. But they were bikes and we got to cross over the two bridges, leading to the southern islands, Geruma and Fukaji. The entire trip was about 4 miles (these islands are not large at all) with some really nice scenery

This is an elementary/junior high school. Imagine your school grounds looking like this.

We ended at the Kerama Airport. Remember the "Supermarket"? Yeah, this airport is tiny. There is a single runway that takes up pretty much the entire island and is like if you have ever landed in a jungle, there just a bunch of trees then a single runway. Yeah, except make it a island full of small mountains.

After our leisurely ride, we headed back to our cell and napped for about half an hour we walked down to the shore to meet the SeaSir van (the company doing the snorkeling/diving excursion). The first stop was a bunch of divers and jusrt us snorkeling. The second stop was just use snorkeling. Very different from the Maldives in many ways, not least of which is that the coral is very much alive here. It was fantastic snorkeling. With the clear water and lush coral, we saw a ton of new types of fish, as well as turtles, a water snake (Sumi saw that, I did not) and a manta ray! They are rare around here in May, so we were quick lucky to see one. This is our first time seeing one in the wild. They are big. Like, really big. Nearly three times to size of the eagle rays and sand rays we saw in the Maldives.

Not the best picture, but his wingspan is about 5 feet

Our guide took this of us.

Back at the cell, we had a feast consisting of ham and cheese sandwiches and...yeah that's it. Mild sunburns despite constantly re-applying sunscreen. Gotta be careful the next few days.