Day ... Whatever, I've lost track

The past several days have been more of the same.  Breakfast, morning diving, early afternoon at the main pool sleeping, lunch, back to the villa for more sleep, dinner and bed.  Yep, that about sums it up.  If I wrote a book about this vacation it would be entitled “Eat, Sleep, Poop!”

Afternoon ritual of sleeping at the Main Pool on the swing

Later in the afternoon - the standard after lunch nap in the villa hammock

It can get hot, so in the late afternoon, the napping moves to the villa pool

The diving has been great, though.  On diving day 2 (day 3 here), we did more drills and exercises to hone my diving skills and dove the reef wall again.  This time we went down to 15 meters (50 feet) and drove the length of the wall.   This was a pretty productive dive with the spotting of a few huge sea turtles. 45 minutes later, we surfaced in the middle of the ocean with a small dive boat ready to retrieve us.  I took one look at the small speedboat and thought, you must be joking.  On a good day with no equipment, those little retractable ladders are a pain in the ass, but in the middle of the ocean with 60lbs on my back?  Ugh!  I poked my knee between the last two rungs and heaved with all my strength – apparently swimming must be great for upper body strength, because I shot up the ladder and into the boat landing elegantly on the back seat.  No one was more surprised than I was!

The last diving day was a bit of a change.  We left around 8:30am and were ferried in a proper and fairly luxurious dive boat about 45 minutes to a deserted atoll where we would perform our last two dives.  We stopped about ½ mile off shore and jumped into the deep blue water.  It was spectacular.  We dropped to about 25 meters (82 feet) and poked around a very lively reef.  We saw more Morey eels and thousands of fish the names of which I have no clue.  The highlights of this trip were seeing a field full of hundreds of garden eels, which look like twigs swaying in the current – that is until they detect you and disappear - and seeing a leaf fish.  This is a rare sighting, even here, as they blend perfectly with the coral and are almost impossible to see.  The literally look like a leaf.  Very cool!

We surfaced in what seemed like the middle of the ocean and awaited pickup by the dive boat.  Once on board, we removed our gear and relaxed with cool scented face towels and assorted fruits on a stick for an hour as we transited to another awesome location.  Once we arrived, we changed our tanks and set out for the last dive which once completed, would grant me certification.  This dive ended up being the best of the four.  Again, it was a reef wall, but this one was full of caves into which we poked for the good part of an hour.  We saw all sorts of unusual creatures and even saw a giant shrimp called a Mantis Shrimp which I am told is quite rare to see.  We also saw clams as big as your head.  For a beginner diver, the caves were a bit intimidating as you had to control yourself both up and down which is much easier said than done.  After the requisite time, we surfaced, boarded the boat and sat back and ate fruit on a stick for the ride home. 

When we got back to the dive center, we completed the paperwork, filled out my dive logbook and received my temporary PADI Open Water Diving Card!  I was thrilled, but the thrill was short lived as, with my 4 dives, I also got a slight ear issue that would prevent me from diving for the rest of the vacation.  Seriously, it is not my week.  In the end, though, I achieved what I set out to achieve and that was all that counts!

As my sister so aptly commented on the previous blog, the injuries “must be hard to take with all the scenery.”  She is right - it’s all good!