Enjoy this episode of Big Blend Radio's Food, Wine & Travel Show — presented in partnership with IFWTWA — featuring return guest Inga Aksamit, an award-winning author, adventurer, and former oncology nurse, as she takes us muck snorkeling for two weeks aboard the MV Bilikiki in the Solomon Islands.

By Inga Aksamit

Floating over some drab coral I tried to love muck diving. Alex, one of our snorkel guides, sang the praises of murky bottoms. He called it a welcome relief from the sensory overload of the reefs of the Solomons Islands. But I loved the days of gaudy excess with the vibrant hues of red, blue, orange and yellow in the fantastic shapes of both fish and coral.

"Slow down. Look closely. Living things are where you least expect them,” he said. So far, I saw monochromatic sand and bland coral. Suddenly the coral moved. And the colors changed before my eyes. I stared as the excessively decorated flat creature, perfectly camouflaged with frilly appendages, slid through the coral polyps, its colors changing to match its environment. Alex was right, I had almost missed the crocodile fish, a bizarre life form, right under my nose in Roderick Bay in the Solomon Islands.

By the time I tracked two frolicking pipefish, a spotted chocolate chip sea star, a six-foot sea snake cucumber, and a gorgeous set of black long-spine sea urchins with their elegant ten-inch spines, all dressed in neutral palettes, I saw the beauty of muck diving.

It was like comparing the understated elegance of rich people’s beige, cream and black with the loud maximalism of extravagant, bold colors.

Everyone's target fish was a seahorse. On the last day, fellow snorkeler Lake got the prize — and it wasn't where we expected. It turned up in the boring shallows, tucked among some leaf debris. Muck diving wins again.

I was on board the MV Bilikiki, a dive boat chartered by Snorkel Venture, alongside 16 other snorkelers, four guides, and an equal number of Solomon Islander crew members.

Two weeks in the Solomon Islands on a snorkeling liveaboard was a dream I didn’t even know I could have. Thinking liveaboards were for divers, I assumed snorkelers had to be beach-adjacent or relegated to day boats. Not so with Snorkel Venture, a company that specializes in snorkel-specific multi-week experiences. This cracked open a whole new world for me.

On a liveaboard, a typical day is built around “eat, sleep, snorkel.” Liveaboards are full of passionate snorkelers who gear up like divers and think nothing of logging five or six hours in the water in two or three sessions. My swim leggings and flimsy rash guard looked puny next to the array of wetsuits, weight belts, freediving fins, hoods, and gloves. These people were ready for anything!

Being a relative newcomer to the underwater world of intensive snorkeling, I worried about a two-week trip. Wouldn’t I get bored doing the same thing day after day? But no. Each day brought stimulating new encounters, both above and below the water.

The Solomon Islands brought to my mind a confusing layer of barely remembered facts as I tried to place the archipelago on my mental map. Somewhere in the South Pacific. But where, exactly?

In fact, the thousand or so islands are strung across 900 miles of Melanesia between Papua New Guinea and Fiji. They sit just below the equator.

These islands anchor the eastern edge of the Coral Triangle. This is a vast marine area between the Pacific and Indian oceans that is the global epicenter of marine life.

I loved the plentiful flashy damsel fish, chevron-patterned butterfly fish, and striped surgeonfish in the shallows. Two of my favorites were gaudy, multi-hued parrotfish and the always popular bright orange anemonefish buzzing around their host tentacles.

We often snorkeled along reefs that plunged into striking vertical walls, giving us a chance to see some larger fish in the deep blue water. These included reef sharks, barracuda, trevally, and snapper. One afternoon, dolphins cavorted with the boat. Squid, octopus, cuttlefish, turtles, giant clams, and brilliant blue sea stars could be found in abundance.

We admired the Yellow-lipped Sea Kraits, sporting black and white bands, but with their lethal venom and our remote location, we kept a safe distance between us. Ditto for the salt-water crocodile (is that a log—with eyes?), safely spotted from the boat. After that, we eyed every “croco-log” with suspicion.

I was fascinated by all the different shapes and colors of coral, including the undulating grooves of brain coral and plating Montipora, where individual polyps form bumps on thin, lettuce-like sheaths.

I never tired of watching Christmas tree worms nestled in the coral, looking like a grove of tiny holiday-decorated trees in shades of yellow, red, blue and orange. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, they’d be gone, retracted into their tiny tubes.

The morning spent with manta rays thrilled all of us. We were dropped by the tender boat drivers in a plankton-rich area where a group of mantas circled around us. The graceful, undulating sweep of their ten-foot fins was spellbinding. When they approached with their cavernous mouths open inhaling their hearty meal, I could hardly grasp what I was seeing.

For me, learning about village life was as important as marine life. The dugout canoes we saw every day fascinated me, being carved in the traditional way from a single mature tree. Villagers can turn out a canoe in two months of carving. Children used smaller ones to paddle to our boat, just to get a look at us. Rarely we saw a small motorboat, contrasting noisily with the silent canoes.

Floating Market Day near Mane Island was a big deal. Electric excitement crackled in the air as canoes gathered around the Bilikiki. Women from the village laid out their bundles of greens, collections of root vegetables such as yams, taro and cassava, and massive stalks of freshly harvested bananas in neat piles on our tender boats. Aida, one of our guides, worked quickly, scooping up nearly all the produce into bins, doling out Solomon Islands dollars to each woman. This provided us with fresh vegetables at the midpoint of our trip and an important economic boost to villages with few ways to make money.

I hung over the railing, smiling at a group of kids. After one of the smaller boats was cleared of produce, I clambered down to join them, taking selfies and laughing over nothing. Later Aida presented one pencil and one notebook to each child. I asked one girl if she had gotten a notebook and she pointed under her shirt, wanting to protect it from accidental splashes. Satisfied, they scrambled into their canoes, the older kids wielding the paddles expertly, and with big smiles and vigorous waves, we said goodbye.

The 125-foot MV Bilikiki, owned by Emperor Divers and chartered by Snorkel Venture, looked a bit battered but was seaworthy and comfortable. For me, the ten private staterooms with ensuite bathrooms, hot showers, flush toilets and air-conditioning were the height of luxury.

The open upper deck, covered mid deck, a salon and bar, gave us room to spread out. Two small tender boats ferried us to nearby snorkel sites. The crew members were always on hand to provide assistance in and out of the boats, bring us back to the Bilikiki and keep the boat running.

I loved how the tables changed configuration at every meal without cliques forming.

Plentiful food expertly prepared kept us satiated, and they accommodated a range of food preferences, including vegetarian and gluten-free options. We had a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables supplied by the villagers. A bar area served beer, wine and mixed drinks with one free drink a day.

Getting to such a remote location took days. Our travel involved two legs on flights that only operated one day a week, but not on the same day, and we crossed the international date line. We flew from Honolulu to Fiji on a Sunday in late April and boarded the ship on the following Thursday. We put the extra time to good use, exploring Nadi, Fiji and Honiara.

Once aboard the boat, we visited a different snorkeling site every day, including the Russell Islands, the Western Province, and Florida Islands. The exact itinerary can vary due to weather. Because of the complicated travel logistics, the two-week tour became eleven days of snorkeling.

I started the trip wondering if two weeks would be too long. By the end, I wished I could stay longer so we could explore more islands, more reefs, and more villages. The people captured my heart with their curiosity about us, ready greetings, and desire to share whatever they had.

I’ll never forget the early mornings when the first soft light of the tropical sky blushed, shading to peachy tones as the dark blue of the sea gave way to aqua and teal. A small group of early risers shared these quiet moments in silence as we drank in the tropics.

I even learned to love the neutral elegance of muck diving.

Inga Aksamit is an award-winning author, adventurer, and former oncology nurse whose writing explores international travel and outdoor adventure. Her childhood, spent across Asia and South America, later inspired her memoir Between Worlds: An Expat's Quest for Belonging. She's also the author of Highs and Lows on the John Muir Trail and The Hungry Spork, which each have won First Place in the Outdoor Writers Association of California Craft Awards. Her articles have appeared in a variety of print and digital magazines and anthologies. She lives in Sonoma County, California, surrounded by vineyards. ingasadventures.com

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