SCUBA

July 1

It’s been pouring rain for the past twelve hours, and it’s really windy and cold, so we decided to bag our dives for today. People who did dive told us that if we had ever gotten sea sick in our lives that we would have been today, so it’s probably for the better that we skipped our dives. Still, the past two days have been incredible. We had four dives. The first was to Ramsey’s at 8 Mile and we saw a huge school of game fish, a bunch of angel fish, and countless others. We were under for 45 minutes and went down to 18 meters. Our second dive was to Anton’s at 2 Mile, highlighted by paper fish, a tortoise, and really cool reef formations. That dive went to 14 meters and lasted 55 minutes. After that dive our guide told us that he had once seen a whale shark bite off a turtle’s leg while he was with a group of divers – I can only imagine what that must’ve been like. Our third dive was to Porthole at 5 Mile, since it was too choppy to reach 7 Mile. We saw a bunch of king fish and a school of triggerfish, amongst others. We were supposed to go be able to go through an opening in the reef (hence the name Porthole) and swim into a cave down there but missed it because the current was too strong. Still a great dive though, and we logged our deepest dive at 22 meters. The last dive was my favorite, as it was just my brother, three guides (two of whom were coming along just for fun), and me. We learned a bunch of funny dive signs, including “I need to go to the bathroom”, “I’ve already gone to the bathroom”, “fuck off”, and “quit fucking around”. There was great visibility at 14 meters, and we saw the widest variety of fish of any of our dives, including three gigantic king fish and one scorpion ragu fish hiding in the reef.

SCUBA is kind of like riding a bike in a weird way – once you learn you never forget. I guess that’s because if you did forget and you went out you likely wouldn’t ever return. Everything moves in slow motion underwater, and sound is really magnified. It’s like a different world. The beach was also very peaceful. We spent the first afternoon chilling by the dive site on the beach and the second afternoon we hiked to a really remote area of the beach full of dunes and watched the sunset, which was really serene. Despite not being able to dive today we had a great time here. Onto the safari.