Snorkeling in the Rain

On Saturday we jumped out the door to go snorkeling. Clouds in the sky? Who cares. A few rain drops? Bah. We were determined to get out and swim.

Just like a Looney Tunes cartoon, we got out at Faga'alu, and the rain just started pouring! Two teams were playing cricket (or the Samoan version of cricket) on the rugby field next to the beach. Samoans ALWAYS play sports in the rain! They don't care. In fact, I think they enjoy it more when it rains.

Anyway, we got our stuff set up on the beach when WHAM! It just rained like there was no tomorrow. Should we leave? Nah. We got in the water and did some snorkeling. It feels kind of weird to swim when it's raining. You realize that, "hey, those fish never know that it's raining!" The fish in the ocean are kind of like Samoans when it comes to snow, "rain (snow), what?"

I'd never seen people play cricket before (except on TV). It's an interesting game. I have no idea how they play it, but it looks interesting. The annoying part is that a guy is blowing a whistle incessantly for the entire length of the game, like a "cricket." Hmm... I wonder...

I think the guys playing on the field had their sons come along to fetch balls. Whenever they'd hit a ball into the ocean, the boys would jump out into the ocean and swim and swim until they'd retrieved the ball. Like they were dogs. It'd be like if we asked our sons to come to the golf course to fetch the balls that went into the ponds. But the boys loved it!

One thing about swimming in the ocean when it rains--the runoff from the surrounding homes starts to fill in the swimming area. And that's not good. It's never good when you are snorkeling and you run into a brown fog of water. That's not dirt or mud you're swimmin' in, brother!

Once we realized we just didn't want to spend our time snorkeling in pig-poop-water while it was raining, we got out and left. It took THAT MUCH to get us to leave. We must be addicted to the ocean or something.