I did get some deliciously sunny egg-in-toast for breakfast though.
I had debated taking today off to do some relaxing, but it was only a half day and the first dive of the day was at The Elbow - the confluence of the north and south currents at the southern tip of Turneffe Atoll. It was one of Lee Ellyn's favorite dives (though nearly ever dive site is), and it was a favorite of Steven as well. He had the day off from shareholder meeting and joined us.
The site was very rocky - it was a rough start. Alisa and I both took quite a bit of air to get down, but once we were under, the current was pretty mild and the visibility - at 50 feet or so - was fine.
The coral were in a spur and groove formation - big ripples of coral that then dove into sandy "grooves" in between. These were bigger than most we've seen.
DelRoy signaled that he had seen three eagle rays, but they were out of sight when I got the memo and looked. I didn't miss the sea turtle however - he was cruising along, until Lee Ellyn started cruising with him - then he went in a bit of a circle to steer clear of her. But that meant he swung around right by the rest of us.
He wasn't the only green turtle that dive, though. DelRoy signaled and pointed right at one, but I looked past it for the first ten seconds, not sure what I was supposed to be looking at.
Quite a bit of the diving is like that. You see something cool, you want to share, but your cool thing might be the color of a piece of coral, and someone else is looking for the fish they think you're seeing. The "dual point" method to allow the other person to triangulate was a good suggestion by Steven.
Steven tried to join us on that dive, but he couldn't get a good seal on his new goggles and aborted.
I was peering off into the distance randomly, and I saw the giant wings of a ray. I started hollering into my mouthpiece (an attractive noise, let me tell you) and Ron and the others eventually caught on. The ray cruised up the groove next to us, then continued on his way out of sight. I spotted him though!
There were hamlets, squirrel, trunk, parrot, damsel, angel, and butterfly-fish. Another thriving ecosystem. Because the current wasn't as strong, there was only one smaller school of permit. Permit is what all the fishers have been flying fishing for. The saying goes, the first time you hunt permit, it's for fun. After that, it's for revenge.
Our second dive was at Tarpon Bay. Less choppy getting in, then just a slight bit of current once we got down - which I appreciate during drift dives. I can just sit back and relax and watch the tropical world go by.
The visibility was pretty bad at only thirty feet. It meant that I missed the sea turtle and the eagle rays that half the group saw. I glimpsed the white underside of a fin once. Instead, I had grabbed DelRoy's magnifying glass and was peering at the ends of coral and sponges to find the skeleton shrimp. I never saw one... That I know of.
Lee Ellyn pointed out some brittle stars that were inside a vase sponge, but that was probably my least favorite dive of the week. Good thing we had one night dive left still!
We cruised back into the resort via the mangroves and the giant lagoon in the middle of the atoll. The lagoon is kinda boring, since you know there aren't dolphins in it, but the mangroves are delightful.
It was our first lunch in, and we had chicken/veggie potpie with Rich and Lee Ellyn and Ron and Denise. Rich and I might have gotten into a debate about how best to cut a pie if there are three people - a great computer science problem. He might have been right, but I needed him to walk through that explanation!
After lunch, I brought sunscreen and a book to the reclining beach chair that sits under a palm tree between our room and the ocean and lather up and read and napped as the tree filtered the sunlight.
At 4:30, I awoke to Ron and Denise paddling a kayak past me. I popped inside, found Alisa just stirring from her nap, then started another round of sunscreen before our plan to go snorkeling.
The drops of rain started just as I was finishing my last leg, and we went to sit inside while the five minute squall passed overhead.
We'd heard that that just off the pier is great snorkeling, so we grabbed our gear from the boat and started.
First, it was a lot of sea grass. (If only there were some sea cows that were grazing on it.) But then we saw our first mound of coral, then a second, then we were just peering up to find the end of one and the beginning of another.
That fish book and our lessons underwater are starting to really take effect. We found urchin, lobster, fish, fish, fish, hermit crabs, anemone, corals and sponges, and something that gave both of us a little sting.
I was playing with my camera, and saw we still had fifty minutes until our night dive was supposed to meet. I was interested to see what was by the sea wall, so I told Alisa and started swimming that way.
Every so often, I'd get chilly, so I'd find a warm spot and hang out. When the current rolled my way, I was kicking along with, getting my momentum going. I'd back off a bit when it rolled toward me - wouldn't want a tired swimmer in five feet of water. (I was sucking in my stomach when going over some coral patches!)
Alisa was apparently being told back on the pier that there was strong current, so to keep an eye on me.
I would've left me, but I guess enough people were keeping her entertained that she stood and watched.
The sunlight filtering through the water was gorgeous. I turned and headed back once I saw a trumpetfish and something that looked like a barracuda.
It was fifteen minutes until our dive when I got back to the pier. We ran back to the room to grab our bag with my dive log in it, then headed to the boat.
The sun set at 6:05, in the middle of our debrief as we were a mile out from the resort. Denroy spent ten minutes explaining all the types of creatures - mollusks, crustaceans, fish, corals, anemones, sponges. I think he might have been delaying to get the water to get darker.
I'm pretty proud of this dive. While Alisa and I are now a bit overweighted, it was good for this one. With only ten feet of water, we were just hanging out horizontal to swim along. Our typical safety stop for three minutes at fifteen feet - as Denroy put it, "let me take out the shovel." I didn't get below nine feet for that whole hour.
But the beauty of it was that you didn't need to. A baby squid was right in our way as we hopped off the boat into grass. The first coral crop we saw had an octopus in it. And the dive pretty much maintained that consistency. Shrimp, urchin, lobster, a bunch of sea cucumbers, and little fish that hit my face and mask.
I was really excited when I saw a octopus approach a lobster, but then the pus veered away. No battle of crustacean versus mollusk today.
The octopus and squid weren't the only mollusks we saw. When Denroy was giving our briefing, he mentioned a sea hare - looks like a yellow-y brown snail without a shell, with two bunny rabbit ears and two folding ridges along its back. If we see that, he said, we might as well stop looking.
Well, we didn't quite stop looking, but at 45 minutes into the dive, the rattle went off (Denroy's noisemaker) and in the sand between corals, there was a thing of that description, about the size of a shoe.
We headed back to the boat, and just under the boat was a pufferfish floating along, with its indignant big eyes darting around.
On the way back to the resort, we peered up at the night sky. We could trace the Milky Way, but I couldn't find any other constellations I was familiar with. We're so far south, you can see the Southern Cross. A lightning storm was intermittently flashing in the distance when we got back to the dock.
I rinsed, then headed to the dining room. The appetizers were out - some Mexican-inspired spiral. Then, the spicy sausage lasagne, with a apple-filled crepe for dessert.
You'd think we'd be sleepy, but there was so much excitement that Alisa and I shared a glass of wine on our porch, chatting, listening to the surf, and watching Jim go by to scare the crocs back into the water.
We saw 10pm. Crazy, right?
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