Last night we spent a good long time talking with Kevin from Mac’s Pizza. Our Nirvana Pizza might have been forgotten by the waitress or kitchen, but we were relaxing, talking and having a good time, so we didn’t care. The only trouble was that made it a three drinks night and Mac’s has the strongest drinks we’ve found.
We were escorted home by two dogs, and once we got home, we turned on the AC, fan, and lit up the mosquito coil and went to bed.
I didn’t sleep well, so I woke up sort of tired and cranky. We ate breakfast and had coffee and just chilled on our balcony.
We needed to be at the dive shop at 8:45, so we got all of our gear ready and left the house at 8:30. The dive shop was expecting us, so all we had to do was pick out our fins and hop on board the boat.
We had seven divers, one guide and a boat driver. Holy crap, this is way outside my comfort zone. Up til now, Nathan and I have always had a private guide. Knowing that I’m the weakest diver, this is really scary.
Then, the comedy of errors that shook my confidence. We are doing backwards rolls off the boat to get in the water, and I slipped in before I was ready. Generally, I WAS ready, but my regulator was not in my mouth and I wasn’t intending to slip over the side. No problem, I bobbed to the surface and fixed myself.
Then as usual I slightly panic to get under the surface. Not a full panic, but a calm down, breathe slow, take it easy kind of nervousness. I got under the surface with Max’s help, and WTF, my weight belt slips off and back to the surface I go.
So ready to say, ‘ok, you guys just go on without me’, but I stuck it out. Max firmly reattached my weight belt, and off we went. I was ok, and progressed to good, but diving with so many people is scary. And while I like Max, and I believe him to be very good, he’s not as doting or patient as Bob (Bonaire) or Hector (Panama) were.
Anyway, once we got under the surface, the reef and the amount of fishes we saw were amazing! Seahorses! Spiny Lobsters. Eels. Flounder. Beautiful coral. This dive was so much better (and worse!) than the one on Monday. We got down to 50 feet, and the dive lasted 54 minutes.
I decided after all that embarrassing hullabaloo, to sit on the boat and read for the second dive. A few others bowed out as well, so it was Max, Nathan, and an older couple from Florida. They were pretty nice to me being a newbie, so we’ll forgive the whole being from Florida thing.
Apparently, I wouldn’t have liked that dive anyway. The current was very swift and the group went pretty deep. This dive site, Cathedral, has Lionfish, so Max took a Lionfish grabber and Lionfish bucket and hunted himself like 13 dinner-sized Lionfish. Two others he killed and threw back in the water because they were small.
We don’t usually casually disregard life, so it was a mix of feelings watching Max kill all these fish. Sure, they are only fish, and yes, they are a terribly invasive species in the Caribbean but at the same time, they are living creatures. He fished each one out of the bucket, used scissors to cut off the poisonous fins, and put the fish in a pile. When they were all done, he scaled and gutted them. Max and friends are eating good tonight.
Back on shore, we had to decide what to do with the rest of the afternoon. We headed to Princess Margaret beach. On the walkway over, we saw Bar One, the floating bar, and decided to head over there.
The big question was to hire a water taxi or swim? We had our backpacks and no place to store or hide them. I asked Nathan if we could pay Fay to watch them and he scrunched up his nose. We were standing in front of Jack’s Beach Bar, and on Monday, Nathan made friends with Coco who works there. It was Coco’s day off, but he was still there, so we asked if it was swimmable and if we could leave our bags there. Of course. No problem to both.
So we put what we needed into a dry bag; sunscreen, our lunch, phone, and money. Using fins and snorkel, we swam to the bar, which wasn’t hard and took maybe 10 – 15 minutes against the current. On the way there, we saw a turtle swimming.
On the bar, Ivor and Lewis were wonderful hosts. We were the only patrons, and we sat on the swing seats, had a cocktail, and enjoyed our lunch.
After our drink, we set off for the swim back to land, with the current this time. Again, we both saw turtles!
Once we got to land, we decided to head back to our place and rest up before dinner. Tomorrow is a big day!