Thursday, August 6, 2010

How we spent our time between dives

Home Sweet Home

The morning came quickly and we raced around getting all of us stuff packed. A bathing suit and a pair of shoes were left behind: the first casualties of the trip. We were ready just in time, climbed in our taxi and began the trip to the port. We climbed about one ferry with the other divers and our dive guide Thomas and began the hour and a half ride to the liveaboard. There was one other guy staying the night and a couple other day trip divers. After throwing our stuff in a room, we got ready for our first of 7 dives!

We were going out on a dingy, which meant I had to go ahead and do a backwards flip off the boat. While not my favorite method, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. The dives were all quite good, a combination of coral and sandy beach. The tsunami in 2004 destroyed a lot of the coral and the heat wave over the last year has bleached a lot too. We did have to watch out for this scary triggerfish that would become aggressive if you got too close to their nest. We got lucky and saw a turtle on one dive and a bunch of blue spotted rays on another. The basic pattern of the day was eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, nap, dive, eat, nap, and then the night dive. This was my first night dive, and I was a little intimidating. I’m not a huge fan of the dark or certain fishes, but I did it. We got to step off the boat this time and four of us went down together. I made Trey hold my hand on the way down. We all had big flashlights, so you could see some. The best part of the night dive was the phosphorescence. As long as the flashlight wasn’t right there, you could wave your hand or fins and see little blue specks flying about the water. Silly comparison, but it is similar to what you would imagine fairy dust looks like!

Overall the night dive wasn’t bad, but I’m not dying to do another on right away. I more prefer tons of visibility. I was beat when we finished around 8:30, had some tea, picked out a movie, Friday Night Lights (perhaps I was feeling homesick?) and curled up in bed.