Mato Island

[Kyle]After one last snorkel at Ua, we made our way a few miles due north to Mato Island. Mato is unusual in that it is not a tree-covered sand spit like most of the other islands in the area and is instead a cone-shaped nub that can be seen from quite far off. Also, it is surrounded by giant fields of coral. Once we wove our way into the anchorage by the island we were completely surrounded and protected from all sides.

We spent a couple of days there. The first was mostly bottom paint cleaning, which was starting to need doing. It was much calmer on the second, so we made a point of spending hours exploring the inner edge of the whole ring of coral that surrounded us. When we were done, one of the other boats in the anchorage offered to take us to the island in his dinghy, saving us a long row.

We made the short climb to the top, stepping over loads of sea snakes along the way. They are twenty times more poisonous than any land snake. They are small, with small mouths. Their venom teeth are in the back and they are also very docile, so they are only dangerous to someone who is trying really hard to see if they will attack, which in my opinion would be really asking for it. Apparently, if you do actually get bitten, you have twenty-five minutes to make your peace with the world.

None of the snakes we saw tried to do anything other than get out of our way. They did it calmly and in no way seemed about to panic. At the top, we got a 360-degree view of the whole southeastern part of Basse Terre’s giant lagoon. The anchorage below was especially impressive. The boats sat in a little turquoise pool surrounded by multi-colored reefs.

It had been a pretty energetic day. By the time we were done with sundowners at one of the other boats, we were struggling to stay awake. That was fine, we had an early start planned for the next morning.