Like dominos the layers of limestone lean on each other till they reach to where the water rushes by. The rushing tidal waters peak at 13 knots as they pass through the Gagarin Rip in the Wessex Island chain.  The navigators label the opening in the island chain as “the hole in the wall”. As the tide turns the water switches directions through the opening and the swirling eddies and back flow creates a white water rafting sensation even in a Zodiac.  The limestone layers create ledges for birds, water preservation, visual feasts and soil deposits for rooting plants.

The crystal blue-green of the waters permit viewing of fish by fowl and the regular diving runs from the cliffs confirms the nutrient rich tidal zone.  The difference between the sky blue and theee water blue — today merely 3 degrees — is more than temperature.  The sky rushes past at 23 kph and the water at 13 knots.  That would be nearly the same speed!  As they flow in opposite directions the sensations, visual and visceral, have a way of turning a whole world upside down!  Yes, we are south of the equator, but that’s not it.  The visual feast of all things now living begins to include rocks that are millions of years old and micro-organisms that nourish new seeds for a moment.

There on the ledges above the waters are trees and grasses surviving without sprinklers and fruits ready to be drifted by waves to the next sheltered ledge.

Sometimes it simply takes a little wind to take the wind out of your sails. Finding the hole in the wall is not another patch, or another sock to mend or another book to read — it might simply  marveling how by nature the law gets done!