My dive instructor once said, "with enough weight, I can teach anyone to dive..."
Today pretty much was about diving, we left at 8a and didn't get back until 6p.
Jen was having trouble from the beginning, she didn't have enough weight and she had a leak in her tank. So she kept floating up.
Not even 5 minutes into the dive we saw a big green moray eel, maybe 5 feet long, right by us. They are cool, but have a nasty temper. Then a manta ray not too long after that. And a big spotted eel. Sorry, no pictures yet, I was using an actual film camera that has to be developed. Old school.
Then maybe 15 minutes into the dive, we had two hammerhead sharks right on us. And it was clear by how they were circling at us that they were being aggressive and sizing us up. I put this French Canadian guy between me and the sharks, I figured those are actually two attributes in one the world could have less of. But then they'd circle behind me, and it is a bad feeling when you can't see a shark that you know can see you. Finally, after a couple of minutes, they swam off. Apparently no one likes French Canadians. It is one of those things that is way cooler once you are safely in the boat in the same condition you left it.
One little attribute of diving is that when something scares you, you breath harder. When you breath harder you float more. So right after the sharks left, so did Jen. I watched her gently float to the surface, thus ending her first dive. At least she saw the highlights. When she got in the boat, she told the captain there were hammerhead sharks, and he didn't believe her. He said he hadn't seen one in 5 years of diving that spot. We later learned that they only come there when they are hungry. No sh*t. That would have been good information to have.
They told us a dive master in town was attacked by a hammerhead shark a few years ago, and he saved himself by holding on to that aileron thing in front. The guy hasn't dived since, he does fishing tours now.
So then we had lunch on this little Island that was slightly bigger than my back yard, and we had meatballs and rice. No, I don't know why. There was a toilet on this little Island, but you flushed it by filling a cut-open milk jug from a bucket and pouring it into the toilet.
The second dive was good but uneventful, jen had more weight and did fine.
Then they took us to a snorkeling spot, it was a shallow reef where the fishing boats clean their fish. So we snorkeled there for awhile, and there were a bunch of little nurse sharks, manta rays, and a couple of sting rays. Totally cool. But Jen had a barracuda creeping on her, and they make the eels look like p*ssies. They are known for biting off fingers and things. Fortunately she made it back to the boat in the same condition she left it.
On the way back, they told us another story that happened to a dive master in that same spot. Keep in mind we were an hour out in the ocean, at least 10 miles. I guess his engine quit, and the boat went adrift. After a day, 4 of the divers decided to try and swim to land. Of course they also started to drift. 3 days later, they found three of them barely alive and one dead. It took them 6 days to find the boat and the other divers. Probably would have also been good information to have. They said he also hasn't dived since, and that he "drinks" every day. No sh*t.
Finally, we got back and unloaded, and our bus left without us. They had to call him to come back. At least he was driving the bus and not the boat.
Now, I'm sitting on the dock with jen, writing this and smoking a good cigar. I totally need to do this more often.
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