We were happily thwarted when a pod of at least twelve spinner dolphins were spotted off the port side bow! I was up on the upper deck with Elwis and Hector, and they suggested we jump in with them!
Elwis circled the boat a few times until we got a bit ahead of them, then I had my snorkel, fins, and wetsuit ready to jump in. I paused slightly after everyone else got in to see where they were headed and swam to cut them off.
I got within twenty feet of them surfacing, with a little one as well! They dove down, and we could hear them squeaking away. It was so exciting.
Since I was the only one that got close enough on the first pass, it was time for take two - we re-boarded, got passed them again, then hopped in. Now that time being later than everyone else meant that I missed them, but the rest of the group got to see them going deep.
Everyone was super happy to have that stop before our first dive. It was the same morning as the shark dive (which was extra money that I didn't want to spend), so we got a different large marine species to play with.
The dive itself was a deep wall, but pretty craggy and pinnacled. Some of the pretty players showed up to "Wrasse Hole": black and white boxfish, a drumfish, two sea turtles with what looked like remora chilling on their shells, and a hidden toadfish.
Given it was another sunny day, I hung out on the upper deck during our surface interval. We were off again a little late, since we waited for a trip of people from the shark dive to jump aboard.
"Fish Den" was ok with the nine or so divers we had since it evened out to a "meadow" at the end where we could spread out and (mostly) avoid being on top of each other.
We came up for air, food, and a mini-nap (those hammocks on our deck are getting some use!) before heading back out to a site that used to be called "Spooky Place" before some guy named Warren got his name tacked on. (Did you know if you donate enough to the Roatan Marine Preserve, they'll name a site for you? Thanks, Warren.)
The site was a rocky channel that led down to about 60ft, at which point you could look up and see the edges coming together thirty feet up - just a gap of six feet or so, and just magical. So of course I swam upside down for a bit to take it in. When you can rule out the rules of gravity (or at least greatly decrease them), why not? The awareness of 3D space is so new and so fun.
What I've been calling "camouflaged toadfish" are actually scorpionfish, so we saw one of those on this dive. A midnight parrotfish, which are a couple feet long, was at the entrance to a swim-thru that took us up to on top of the wall. It was a supremely awesome dive - both great "architecture" and marine life!
We had a bit to wait before the night dive, so just ran back and forth to the lockers where our gear was stored (like, twenty feet from the boat) to grab our dive lights and heckle Hector, who "got" to be our guide for the evening because the majority of us going where on his boat during the day.
It was a fairly large crew - us, two couples we dove with every day, then four guys from another boat. Despite that, we managed a pretty good dive. I mean, of the three octopods I saw, I found one of them, so I'm pretty proud of that. The one I found wasn't very shy either - just let us take some pictures and changed color for us.
There were actual toadfish (if I now know what a toadfish is) along the rocky walls of a small cavern, along with lobster, more teeny shrimp, crabs, startled-looking porcupinefish, a drumfish, and some fern-looking things. They were basket starfish, only coming out at night because they curl up at the light. It's like someone attached a bunch of delicate fronds together and animated it slightly.
We avoided the jellyfish, though something got Alisa right along her bathing suit bottom during the day, and it was still kinda tender and stinging. Between the bruise from her slip on the boat on Sunday (which now looks like the continent of Africa on her outside left thigh) to some knee bruises from banging on the ladder to just a few of the general bug bites, Alisa is looking pretty beat up for being on vacation. All I got is that my ears are plugged up. Guess that means that I don't have to listen to her complain! (She doesn't complain... but I wouldn't know since I can't hear.)
It was kinda like Italian night, so we got a yellow rice version of risotto. It was really a tough decision, though, because the food said red wine but the temperature said white. We compromised with deciding to drink more tomorrow and did neither. The passionfruit cheesecake was a good enough rendition for me to partake, then it was a few hours of relaxing before lights out.
No comments:
Post a Comment