There are only 5 divers myself included so it doesn't take long to kit up and carry our dive kit down to the waiting hard chine dive boat. I last dived over 2 years ago so by rights I should have had a pool session but since I have close to 100 dives; they let is slide and it didn't take long for everything to come back. It all feels so natural now, a bit like riding the proverbial bicycle. It will be my first dive with Nitrox instead of air and I should have switched my dive computer to nitrox but I just left it on air which is a more conservative measure mostly because I don't have the manual to switch to nitrox and you have to key in percentages and stuff and I don't want to be down there wondering if I did it right.
The first dive wasn't so fantastic, not too much to see but the water is nice and warm. We did see a small moray and a stinging nettle which was mid water and looked like fishing line just floating along with small poison capsules spread along it's length which was about a metre. I only wore a 1mm wetsuit top and I was plenty warm enough and 4kg of lead had me sinking like a stone. The second dive was much better, 2kg of lead; more than enough. We saw a nudibranch, a leaf fish (it looks just like seaweed) and several octopi. The octopi were very shy and refused to come out of their holes so we could only peer in at them. The diving rules here are more relaxed so they allow you to gently touch some of the things like the anenome that nemo usualy hangs around. Quite interesting, the 'tentacles' for want of a better word attach themselves to your finger quite quickly and you have to give a bit of gentle tug to get your hand away. One of the girls accidentally had them latch onto her forearm and she had a nasty case of mosquito bites where they touched her skin. Much more successful second dive and it was nice to get back to the boat with more than 70 still on the gauge, it really is like riding a bicycle.
Back on land and after a shower I found Caron on a beach recliner in deep shade which is unusual for her but ideal for me. We spent the afternoon reading, no silicone on display today, until the sun lost it's heat when we went for a walk along the beach past I don't know how many beachside holiday resorts. The beach is a bit eina to walk on because it isn't really sand but a mixture of coral and sand and sometimes the coral isn't as broken up as it should be.
I've seen a number of local fishermen on their boats during the day but we got to see some locals fishing with a net from the shore. They were catching small sardine like fish - they didn't look very appetising to me but they seemed pretty happy with them.
Back at the shack, another splendid meal and then before we knew it, it was sleepies time. Enjoyed watching a small child throw all the the decorative rocks around the edge of the pool into the pool! Ah, the joys of parenting!
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