Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Nemo's Going to the DROP-OFF?!?!?

Diving first thing in the morning is not condusive to maintaining energy for the rest of the day. We headed out to dive at 8 am, into choppier water than we've experienced so far. Between Long Cay and Dove Cay, a channel leads out to the open ocean where the waves get bigger and the water gets bluer. Past "The Grotto" lies "The Plane", where an old drug running plane crashed and left a great wreck to dive near. We descended down after getting seasick trying to put our gear on, into brillian cerulean waters. The reef at 60 feet down was teeming with life! Parrotfish, large groupers, a trumpet fish, damsel fish, and brilliant blueheaded wrasse were scattered about, crunching on some coral and algae. Past the plane SE, was "The Wall". The shelf literally drops from 70 feet to 7000 feet. All you can see is blue. Deep blue. It was exactly the scene from Finding Nemo, where he goes to the drop-off and tries to venture out over the ledge. (Minus the boat of course...). The dive seemed very short though as we had to turn around fairly early. Some of the divers used more air than the rest so we had to cut it a few minutes short. On our way back, we saw the other group just going out. Apparently, one of the O-rings on a tank had blown and they took a long time getting in the water. Our group waited on the boat for another half hour for the diving group to surface, in the meantime getting extremely seasick. Note to self: take Dramamine! I haven't stopped waving around all day, I feel like im still on the water 12 hours later.

Next we went out into the community on a small scavenger hunt for local stories. We found Val, a one armed man that got bitten by a Bull shark and a Tiger shark while fishing. He is a great singer and taught us some valuable lessons about Island time and the slower pace of life. We hunted for some ice cream and talked to several locals along the way. Coming back in, SJ, Mike and I decided to go snorkeling in the swimmers area. Beautiful sea life today! Several lobsters, an odd looking anemone, a Christmas shrimp, some really neat, colorful adult Slippery Dicks (yes, i know, its a fish... >.<), and a few brave damselfish. All in all, a great snorkel. Im very disappointed that I didn't bring my camera though. Nap time and dinner time came next (pizza!!!) and it was a relaxing night, since Im very confident about my test tomorrow.

All the crafts and trades are coming out of the woodworks, like I said, and I did another haircut, Mary-Kate's this time, and Liz traded me a backmassage for a cute hair wrap. Blue and green and orange! We all figure, why not get islandy? We're here! We learned about other peoples crafts and we'll all trade at some point.

In other news, a marine class that I really wanted to take at SCU has now been broken up into two much lamer classes and Stephen and I are extremely disappointed. We both knew that there were only a few marine classes, and they were supposed to supplement our time here. Now we both don't want to take the 2 classes that are offered, they're not as specific and certainly dont sound as fun. It should be interesting to come back to a place that has absolutely nothing to do with my experiences here. Thank god for Stephen!

The end of my evening was spent showing some people how to sent text messages from the internet and they were all thrilled to be able to connect with their loved ones back home a little quicker.  Great night! <3

1 comment:

  1. Hi Kathrin,.. Your mom just today sent me your blog site and I could not stop reading. Thank you so much for sharing all your experiences with us. Keep it up, I love it !!
    Aunt Chris

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