The day an 80-year-old helped me overcome my biggest travel fear

Nothing says “brave” like a person snorkelling with diamond solitaires the size of pinky nails attached to their earlobes.

That’s what I say to my new friend, Deb, an accomplished Canadian businesswoman, who has taken to the water with three carats apiece in her ears every day of the Indonesian adventure we’re on.

Credit: Jamie Brown

“They’re very secure,” she laughs dismissively, the diamonds glinting as she jumps into the water.

Secure – that’s much like Deb herself, I muse. She has the physical confidence of a 25-year-old and the mental dexterity to match, despite being much closer to 80 than 20.

We’re on the luxurious small ship Aqua Blu, cruising the Banda Sea around Indonesia’s Spice Islands. The region is little touched by tourism despite its biologically diverse and healthy reefs providing wonderful snorkelling and diving. The surrounding sea is calm, clear and the perfect temperature for finned frolicking.

But soon the day will come when even all that beauty won’t be enough to coax me into the water. It’s the day we are scheduled to snorkel offshore from uninhabited Manuk, the steep cone-shaped island that is the easternmost volcano in Indonesia.

For me, it’s tidak to Manuk, not because it’s a volcano, and an active one at that. This is a place famous for sea snakes. And I am famously snake averse.

Deb’s not having it. “You didn’t come all this way to stay onboard during excursions,” she says over pre-snorkel breakfast. “You’re only in some places once in your lifetime.”

Our cruise director tries to help. “Sea snakes are generally placid,” he says. I silently note the “generally”.

I have also noted that Manuk is home to one of the world’s largest colonies of a sea snake species, the very venomous black-banded sea krait. Sea snakes are reptiles, so snakes for real, as opposed to eels, which are icky, but fish. And sea kraits are semi-aquatic, as opposed to other sea snakes that are purely aquatic. So a sea krait is basically a land snake that swims. A land snake on land is bad enough.

A sea krait is basically a land snake … that swims.Credit: iStock

“People getting bitten is very rare,” our cruise director continues. Rare – that means not unheard of. “If they come towards you, fold your arms across your body and stay still.”

“So they come towards you?” I say, the panic building. “What happens if you don’t see them come towards you and your arms are doing things other than being crossed across your body?” I’m convinced I’ll start waving my arms to shoo them away, thus encountering the exception to both the “generally” placid and “very rare” biting thing.

“Just come out to the island on the boat,” coaxes Deb. “You don’t have to go in the water. ”

And so, I somehow find myself on the tender on the way to Manuk, along with most of my cruise mates who all seem to have no qualms about what lies ahead.

That’s when Deb confesses. “I’m not keen on snakes, either,” she says, as one glides by us near the surface of the water.

Masks and flippers are handed out. The skipper cuts the boat’s engine.

“But when in Rome …”

Deb sits on the tender’s edge. I sit next to her. We pull on our flippers. Another snake glides by.

Deb pulls down her mask. “Holy F…!” she yells and splashes into the sea.

“F…, f…, f…ity f… f…!” I yell (being a guest of Aqua Blu I have, up to this point, kept my pirate-like swearing to myself, but Deb did it first).

And splash! I am in. Among the sea snakes.

And I am not afraid. I am mesmerised as they make cursive “S” shapes with their paddle tails to move about, graceful and relaxed, in the sparkling blue water. I even see two entwine around each other, a mating dance, during which I swear they make a heart shape. They are exquisite.

And as one heads my way, I cross my arms, hold still, and vow to myself, that in a world of increasing fear, I’ll be more like Deb. That’s where diamonds are found.

The writer travelled as a guest of Aqua Expeditions.