New Year by the Sea

I have a confession to make.

I don't like the festive period. Or Fridays. I don't like endings, overall. I'm a Monday-kind of person: sitting down with my freshly brewed cup of plantation coffee, setting and attacking my goals with a clear mind at the start of the week feels much more enjoyable than dragging a tired self to the nearest drinking hole to shake off the workload of the week.

Anyway, the festive period. I'm glad it's over. But that's not to say I didn't make the most of it. One of the reasons why I hate it is the incredible pressure to be the one having the most fun. Having spent some Christmases and New Years in abject loneliness, away from friends and family, my heart goes out to those who are even less fortunate than I am.

On New Year's even I'd hoped that some dive centre would be offering a NYE night dive, but sadly, that didn't happen. So spontaneously, I decided I'd bring in the New Year by the sea anyway.

Karuna and I bought a tent, got a bottle of pink and some M&M's, and headed to Flic en Flac. The atmosphere on the beach was incredible.

Families had pitched tents and were blasting cheerful sega music or 'disques de l' annee' countdowns on the radio. The smell of BBQ mingled with that of the seaweed. There was a perfect sky above, with an almost full moon, and kids ran, shrieking and waving their sparklers. Sporadic fireworks announced the lead up to the main event.

As expected, Karuna and I had to have some fails. We decided to pitch our tent after the fireworks, and that was a good call, because turns out we'd sat down LITERALLY beneath the firework installation of one hotel.

We poured ourselves some vino, ready to toast to the new year with only two minutes to go (where did time go?!) ... and realised that the fireworks were starting. Right above us. We ran for our lives.

^ See those things in the bottom-right corner? That's the stuff we left behind when we fled...

From a safe distance, we admired the fireworks. 2018 had arrived so quickly! Erupting in the sky, with the laughter and hopes of the people beneath it, heralding new opportunities and challenges to come. Reminding us of the relentlessness of change.

I wasn't sad to let 2017 go, and my heart squeezed a little as I thought of the people who wouldn't be accompanying me into 2018. At the top of my mind was Bobo, my dog who had appeared in my life for far too short a time but touched me in ways that I still couldn't fathom.

The sky was ablaze with the excitement of the people, and our ears rang with the display.

And the party continued once the fireworks were over: people lit lanterns, and we lit our own sparklers, taking fire, as luck would have it, from friends who'd come to the beach as well.

The moon shone upon the sea. I wish I could go for a dip but was worried about currents.

At about 2am, we decided it was time to go to bed, so pitched our tent as close as we could to the sea, but not that close to be swallowed by the tide. A family that had set up camp nearby played a tracklist of reggae and sega music. We felt safe and fell asleep within minutes, not even bothering to close up the tent so that we could watch the waves roll in. Crabs walked underneath us.

We woke up a little after the sun and dipped our toes in the water to greet the ocean. Temperatures had dropped during the night, and we felt sticky - we were ready to head home. The beach broke our heart a little bit, though. Litter which could easily have been avoided (bottles, cups and plastic) and the remains of fireworks were strewn about. It was a clear reminder of how much work we had to accomplish this year for a pristine ocean. I was determined.

I wasn't done with the ocean yet.

There was no better way to spend NYD than under the water: so I headed to Blue Bay where I did my first dive of the year.

As with all underwater pictures, these fail to show the sheer beauty and magic of the anemone garden: they were all around me, velvety red with orange fronds and swarming with baby clownfish.

I was photobombed by this grumpy little fish:

It was a shallow dive, incredibly magical: we flitted among a garden of anemones and corals, with hundreds of barracudas and squids swimming past us. We even spotted Nemo, who didn't look too pleased at being disturbed.