After a somewhat restless night of sleep, I woke up about 7am local time and headed down for a breakfast of French toast, eggs and bacon expertly prepared by Chef Paul. The wind had kicked up quite a bit since last night so we couldn't use the resort dock. Instead we loaded into the resort shuttle (another pickup truck) and drove about 10 mins through the jungle to a protected dock. All 20 of us loaded onto our dive boat for the week, the Miss U.
Our first dive spot was calm led "The Maze". A wall started about 40 ft and dropped off from there. I haven't been on a real dive with my own gear since September of 2009, but after getting in the water it all came back pretty quick. I had my new underwater camera with me but the battery ran out in about 5 mins. Turned out to be a pretty uneventful dive though so I didn't mind. We did see a pretty good sized turtle but he wanted nothing to do with us.
After that quick 30 min refresher we headed to our next spot "Ragged Cay (Key)" which was a similar wall but it was located off a small island. This dive was MUCH BETTER, which made me miss my camera. We saw a couple huge crab, a large green eel, 3 lionfish (on of which was gigantic) and a dead shark of some kind. The shark was about 2-3 feet long and not hard to spot since it was upside-down in about 20 ft of water. I wasn't sure it was dead but the guys behind us saw a wound in its chest. Another couple saw a spotted eagle ray right before we got back to the boat but I missed it.
We then headed back to the resort for lunch. Some of the group are planning a couple shore dives but since it is still pretty windy I've opted for diving into a few cocktails. For dinner tonight I've chosen the red snapper in a coconut dill sauce (I think that is what she said). Here a decouple pictures from our first dive before my camera croaked:
Our first dive spot was calm led "The Maze". A wall started about 40 ft and dropped off from there. I haven't been on a real dive with my own gear since September of 2009, but after getting in the water it all came back pretty quick. I had my new underwater camera with me but the battery ran out in about 5 mins. Turned out to be a pretty uneventful dive though so I didn't mind. We did see a pretty good sized turtle but he wanted nothing to do with us.
After that quick 30 min refresher we headed to our next spot "Ragged Cay (Key)" which was a similar wall but it was located off a small island. This dive was MUCH BETTER, which made me miss my camera. We saw a couple huge crab, a large green eel, 3 lionfish (on of which was gigantic) and a dead shark of some kind. The shark was about 2-3 feet long and not hard to spot since it was upside-down in about 20 ft of water. I wasn't sure it was dead but the guys behind us saw a wound in its chest. Another couple saw a spotted eagle ray right before we got back to the boat but I missed it.
We then headed back to the resort for lunch. Some of the group are planning a couple shore dives but since it is still pretty windy I've opted for diving into a few cocktails. For dinner tonight I've chosen the red snapper in a coconut dill sauce (I think that is what she said). Here a decouple pictures from our first dive before my camera croaked:
My dive buddy and roommate Ted
Dive guide Reuben and the wall
No comments:
Post a Comment