January 20-29, 2011

I swam out towards the limit of the reef at Muri beach with Viktor one day, where snorkeling is really good. We made sure not to get too close to the edge, we had learned our wave lesson from Tikehau. The water was shallow in places and we had to take care not to cut our feet on the corals, but this wasn’t a big problem. It was easy to just stay afloat and swim until we could see a safe place to put our feet.

During my research on Rarotonga I found that one of the things they use heavily in their tourist marketing is the fact that there are no poisonous animals or insects on the island. It gave me a good feeling and made it easier to select to go to Rarotonga with the kids. Marketing works.

As we were out there on the reef a kayak came out with a local father and his two boys. They were obviously going to do snorkeling. They came over to us and the guy asked us, with a horrified tone in his voice: “Don’t you have any shoes?” I had to admit that we didn’t. He said it was dangerous.  Thinking I knew what he was talking about I confirmed that we knew corals can cut you and that we took care. He explained that it wasn’t corals that were the problem. “Don’t you know that there are lots of stonefish here? They have poisonous spikes. If you step on one you have half an hour to get treatment, otherwise you will die. I would never bring my child out here without shoes.”

Brilliant.

No poisonous animals or insects, huh? “I did not have sex with that woman.” Sometimes it’s all in the choice of words. Thank you Rarotonga tourist office, we just lost all confidence in everything else you claim in your glossy brochures.

We hurried back to shore. Yet again I felt like a responsible father.

I looked up these fish we had never hear about before on the web. Wow. In the Amazon we had seen bullet ants, they can pump a neurotoxin into your flesh and their sting is considered the most painful insect sting in the world. The stonefish does one better. A stonefish sting is considered “the worst pain known to humanity.” Giving birth to a child is like a mosquito bite compared to this thing.

The stonefish is the most poisonous fish in the world and like the bullet ant it pumps neurotoxins into you. It has 13 long spikes on its back. If you touch the fish it will start thrusting these spines quickly and forcefully upwards in an undulating motion, much like a lethal sewing machine. Its interesting little poison mix will start to kill your flesh and if you are lucky you only have to amputate.

They are called stonefish because of their extremely good camouflage. They look exactly like nice little stones where you want to put your feet to avoid being cut by the corals.

There is an antidote, which incidentally is the second most administered antivenom in Australia. You do have more than half an hour to get it though and most people survive  stonefish stings.

A good thing to know is that the venom is destroyed by heat. If you put your foot in a bucket of water at 50 C (122 F) you will scream in pain from the hot water (it probably will not add much pain compared to the sting, anyway) but all the stonefish poison will be broken down.

The next day we bought reef shoes (and also snorkeling equipment) for the whole family.

Inspired by the locals we rented 3 kayaks one day and went out to the limits of the reef, so everyone could enjoy the good snorkeling and the stonefish (notice the shoes).

Me strong. Me tug whole family

The snorkeling on Rarotonga was fantastic. Lots of coral formations and plenty of fish around all the time. The underwater casing for the camera was heavily used. Here Iseline is getting ready:

Going in:

Darth Vader getting ready to snorkel:

<Heavy life-support-machine breathing> Iseline, Adrian and Viktor, I am your father… </Heavy life-support-machine breathing>

The underwater world was fascinating. Corals form stunning structures in different colors and look like they have been designed by some artist at Pixar. It’s difficult taking photos underwater, since you can seldom see anything on the camera screen. We just snapped photos in all directions and took several hundred of them. Here are some of the ones that turned out OK:

There were spiky things in addition to the stonefish we never saw:

I stepped on one of those in the Mediterranean when I was a kid. The reflex to stay far away from them is still there.

There were schools of small fish living in some of the coral “trees.” They would swim about close to it, and as soon as we came closer, everyone disappeared really fast into the coral structure all at once. After a while they would peek out and then slowly come out again:

This is the same one seen from above, while they are slowly coming out from hiding:

There were plenty of cool fish:

The starfish were blue:

The kids really got addicted to snorkeling:

The day we rented kayaks we had to go back after a couple of hours of snorkeling to give back the kayaks. When I told Viktor we had to go he said “Ahhh, we just got here. Can’t we stay here forever.” He caught the sentiments of all of us exactly in that statement.

Eirik

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