Today was our last full day in Santo, and we wanted to do something special. We decided to hire a guide take us to a nearby uninhabited island for some snorkeling and to take us to a quiet beach where were could explore a bit. We also ordered some picnic lunches so we could stay on the island a bit longer. Our guide, Max, picked us from the Turtlebay around 8:30 and drove us down to another resort, the Santo Saffire. From here we’d be taking a boat out to Aese Island. It’s a good sized island, but there apparently have been some disputes about control over the island, so that it remains uninhabited.

The plan was to head to the first point in our little zigzag path above for snorkeling and then head south a bit before heading to a small beach on the shore.

The drive to Santo Saffire passed quickly. There were no guests staying at the lodge, but it looked *very* nice. A bit ritzier than the Turtlebay. After we parked, we walked through the grounds to reach some stairs leading down to the beach.

At the bottom of the stairs, huge tropical trees spread their branches over the beach. Max waded out to start prepping his boat.

As we waited for a few minutes, we noticed some delicate orchids were blooming on the low-hanging tree branches.

Max soon gave us the signal to start heading out. The tide was very low, so we had to walk out to the boat, picking our way first through dead coral and then through live coral.

Once onboard, we set off for Aese Island, which you can see to the right of Lydie’s shoulder in the photo above. It was only about 25 minutes away. Once there, Max dropped us off on the north end of the island for snorkeling. The place was perfect, with deep reef canyons filled with life. Lydie and Cassie quickly started diving down to see what they could find.

After just a few minutes, Cassie spied something to show me.

A giant blue star fish!

The coral was incredible, with huge horizontal fans spreading across one another, apparently competing for sunlight.

We all enjoyed seeing the tropic fish swim amongst the coral. There are actually quite a few fish in the previous pictures, but they blend in well. They’re much easier to spot when they are moving.

Hey, Nemo!

We enjoyed sharing with Cassie some of the things we’d learned from our scuba sessions. For instance, Mick had showed us that you could fan water towards Christmas Tree worms to make them retreat back into their tubes.

We swam through coral crags, diving low to see the coral up close.

In the shot above of Lydie, the color from the coral is washed out because of all of the intervening blue water. From closer distances, the colors were more vibrant.

The blue squiggle in the picture above is actually the filtering mouth of a huge clam.

In one spot, we were swimming closer to the surface when a school of mullet swam by with their big mouths open.

These were the same types of fish we’d seen near the surface of the water when we were kayaking back from the Matevula Blue Hole a couple of days ago.

We also saw shells on the ocean floor, like this massive seven-pointed conch.

Towards the end of our swim, we found a big pillow cushion star fish nestled in amongst the corals.

Here’s a closer look:

We were delighted to have Cassie back to 100% in the water. And fortunately, the snorkeling in Vanuatu is so great that she really didn’t miss out on much by not being able to scuba.

After a couple of hours, we climbed back in the boat and headed to the beach. We dried off and had our picnic in the shade of another incredible tropical tree covered in ferns and orchids.

While we ate, we sketched out plans for erecting a huge series of treehouses in this tree and its neighbor in the style of they Swiss Family Robinson. Max added some delicious local bananas to our picnic (which fit in well with our imagined plans to live on the island).

Max also gave us some coconuts to wash it all down.

Truth be told, Cassie and Lydie didn’t like the coconut water. This might complicate our island survival plans.

Once we’d finished our lunch we headed off down the beach to see what we could find. This crew likes to find shells. Lydie started with a very purple but also very dead crab.

I found the trees as captivating as the sea life.

We also found some long-abandoned US Navy equipment from WWII.

And the shells were amazing. Team Hubbard had a great time finding some impressive specimens as we walked. Sadly, this one was just too big to take with us.

Lydie found the show-stopper. As we were walking down the beach, she screeched and ran to the edge of the water and found this beauty.

It was a completely intact nautilus shell. When showed it to Mick later that night we learned a few cool things about the shell. First, these are rare, even in this island wonderland. Second and relatedly, these guys live deep underwater — typically at depths of 200 to 400 meters. But sometimes at night, they’ll come closer to the surface and can be seen at scuba depths. Third and best of all, this shell is not from any old nautilus. This is the shell of a Nautilus vanuatuensis, a special species found only in Vanuatu — hence the name.

We headed back to the boat, our hands filled with shells and bits of coral. On the short ride back to Santo, we saw small flying fish skimming over the water. When we returned to the Turtlebay, we decided to really pack it all in for our last day, so we grabbed a couple of kayaks and took Julie to see the Matevula Blue Hole (already covered in a previous post).

Around 6, we finally made it back to our rooms. We showered up and headed down to the restaurant for our last dinner. We’d arranged something special to share for our last big meal.

Like all of the other meals we ate on the edge of the lagoon, this was wonderful.

Unfortunately, we’d be leaving in the morning. Even worse, we had an early departure, so we needed to get packed up tonight. That meant we had to sort which shells to bring and which to leave at home. Even that plan soon unraveled. We learned that New Zealand, where we’d be visiting next, has very strict rules on bringing shells into the country. After some careful research and some soul searching, we decided that all of the shells had to stay in Vanuatu.

Even the amazing nautilus shell Lydie found would have to stay. In fact, the nautilus shell would probably have been the worst one to take through New Zealand customs, since we could hear quite a bit of water sloshing inside. Lydie took the news like a champ.

In the end, Lydie decided to give the shell to Yvanah. We’d learned the day before that, while Mick had signed off on the scuba certification for Julie and me, Yvanah had been the one to sign off on Lydie’s. Indeed, Lydie was one of Yvanah’s first few students. So, Lydie gave the shell to Yvanah as a little way of saying thank you. Lydie also scratched her initials into the shell of the deep-diving creature. Who know? Maybe Yvanah will get some other students to scratch their initials into the shell.

Our last full day had been incredible — exactly the kind of capstone to the week we’d hoped it could be. Tankyu tumas, Santo!

-Will