RAINING FISH!

Today we finally have good weather...sorta.  Good enough to go diving, at least. We woke up at about 5am-ish. Went to breakfast around 7am, then headed over to the dive boat around 8:30am. Nicholai, from Austria, was our dive master today. He's hilarious! The boat ride was cool. ALOT of people (more than half of the divers) were smoking, which was kind of interesting. I thought you were not supposed to smoke before you dove. Oh well. The boat was spacious and had a top desk for sun bathing. I hung out with Eric on the top for a few minutes, but knew I would get baked  quickly. The weather going out was awesome.

 

We jumped in around this underwater mounrtain, and swam around it for our dive. It was really, really cool. Eric and I weren't really paying attention and went a little too deep (22.5 meters), when the legal limit is only 20. OOPS! The sink down was nice. Nick had to pull me down a little bit because my wet suit is so bouyant (brand new). I ended up with 2 more kilos of weight than I started with, just to keep me down! We dove with two other guys...Paul (from Germany) and Thomas (from England).

 

The dive was easy and relaxed (until i couldn't stay down because I needed more weight!), and I have never seen anything like what we saw. It was like the water was raining fish. Just as rain comes down in sheets, there were sheets of fish EVERYWHERE! Big ones, small ones, colored ones...everywhere. There were fiish just swimming around, some chasing others, some little ones cleaning big ones. There were all sorts of creatures down there. The most notable creatures were a very big, old turtle and a ginormous sting ray. The turtle was cool. He was just hanging out eating when we saw him, then he started swimming up. The sting ray was huge! He was sitting on a rock, just chillin' out. Nick,our dive master, got really, really close to it and just stared it in the eyes, or whatever those holes where eyes should be were. We also saw a lobster and a yellow eel. The coolest thing that I found on my own was a starfish. I wanted to get closer, but I was not neutrally bouyant, so I tried to stay a little distance from the coral. I did NOT want to land on it....because 1) I didn't want to hurt it and 2) I didn't want it to hurt ME!

 

After the divie (we stayed down for 50 minutes), we surfaced, got on the boat, and were served fresh fruit and coffee. Yum. On the boat ride home the weather got bad and it was pouring rain. It's been about 3 hours since the boat ride, but I still feel like I am on the boat! 

 

That was scuba!

 

Brandy