The one thing there is to do there, besides snorkeling and walking along the long beach is to take a track across to the windward side of the island. There, you can snorkel on a WWII airplane wreck.
Somosomo Beach, sunrise, and rainbows
We had heard a few different people say they couldn’t make it the whole way through on the track. Storms had knocked a lot of trees down and the track had become overgrown. We had all day, a machete, and a GPS position for the wreck. I figured if we could find some sort of a trail to start with, we could bushwhack a new one the rest of the way.
We were wrong. The machete was great for cutting a path through, but it was slow going. We only had a third of a mile to go, so daylight wasn’t a problem. The problem was that at the speed we were going, the mosquitos could easily catch us. One or two we could have ignored, but then there ended up being swarms of them. Time to retreat back into the burning sun at the beach, where they won’t follow.
At that point, as a consolation prize, Maryanne decided to swim back to Begonia via the long reef. I walked to the other end of the beach to look for a path through the grass to the top of the adjacent hill. I only made it halfway before the grass got twice as high as I was. I could push my way uphill, but when I got to the top, I wouldn’t have been able to see anything beyond the grass in front of me, so I gave up.
The underwater world, as usual, keeps us amazed
The last picture being a close up of a giant clam
I returned the dinghy to Begonia and then had a snorkel of my own. That pretty much completed all of the recreational options for Somosomo. That was nice. We didn’t feel guilty about taking the next day as a lazy day aboard - a lazy day with an amazing view.
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