Champagne Bay

Picture perfect tropical beach. Beautiful torquoise blue waters and fine white sand. Tropical fish of many colours darting in and around the various shaped corals. What a beautiful day spent here. Mind you we had to spend an hour waiting to board one of the ship's tenders. The jetty on Champagne Beach can only acommodate one shuttle at a time, so carrying over and back 1700 odd passengers and extra crew took a while but the wait was worth it!. I had brought my snorkelling gear with me and boy was that a good decision! The return wait wasn't as long, mostly I expect because there were still a lot of passengers still in those warm waters. The trees and grass grew right alongside the soft sands of the beach and very close to the high water line. Lots of locals set up their little stalls selling various nic nacs from shells, sarongs and beads. there were a couple of beer huts and fried taro stalls. The water in the bay even felt soft and silky, I don't know why but it did. Someone suggested it was due to bubbles which come up from under the water all related to the volcanic conditions of the island...?