Getting off the base
At this point, no one had any type of vehicle yet, so I — and almost everyone else — had been essentially confined to base. Jones and Medlicott rented, on base, two of the tiniest cars I’ve ever been in. I was eager to leave the gates of MCAS Futenma like a greyhound at the starting line of a racetrack.
10 of us fit into the small cubes otherwise known as cars. We all had to buy snorkeling gear first and my thrifty ways led me to buy cheap equipment which I would come to regret a few weeks later. We stopped at a spot north of the bases on the western side of Okinawa (the East China Sea side). In 5 minutes I saw more fish than I could hope to see in an aquarium in a day. To be fair, a lot of the sea life was uninteresting creatures, like the multitudes of Sea Cucumbers I saw. They are just 4-10 inch black-colored cucumber-shaped blobs that sit still and don’t move. One or two people poked one with their foot, and they shoot out some white sludge (insert joke here).
Trust me, it’s a lot more cramped than it looks
Arriving at the unnamed and semi-secluded beach
Stanley actually caught a fish, he wouldn’t catch another for 2 months
Reflections and shadows at low tide
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