Thankfully, there was no bump and grind last night. Once we were home from dinner, it was quiet and we were able to fall asleep.
At some point in the night, there was a lot of wind, because when Nathan got up, our hummingbird feeded had been knocked over.
It was not raining when Nathan got up this morning, but that did not last long. I was hopeful that it would clear up and be a beautiful hot, sunny day like yesterday, but that did not happen either.
It rained through breakfast and lunch. Nathan snorkeled briefly at 11 am (in the rain, because why not?) and then came in for lunch. I stayed dry and tidied up our room and got ready for our dive outing this afternoon.
We ate salami and cheese sandwiches on our baguette from yesterday, cut up some pineapple and quickly cleaned up.
At 12:20, with backpacks full of diving gear, we made the 40 minute trek to the dive shop.
Dewey welcomed us and had us fill out the requisite forms. You acknowledge a risk of death. If you screw up underwater, you could die. This activity is not natural for humans. The usual.
So, of course, I was contemplating the easiest, most face saving way to get out of diving that didn’t include crying. If you think of one, let me know.
We got on the boat and I was still thinking about bailing…I could just hang out with the boat captain… as Jodi did while in Roatan last year. She just hung out on the boat. No crying was involved.
I sat next to a Canadian woman during the boat ride. This was like her 200th dive. It was my 19th. She could tell I was scared and anxious and asked me what my fear was. Uh, dying, duh.
I told her about holding Denzel’s hand last year, and that I had told Dewey about it also. When we got to the dive site, everyone put their gear on. I was probably the slowest, seeing as I was still trying to find a way to weasel out.
I’m sure Nathan had sized up the situation and knew he had to get me in the water before he got in himself. Well played sir!
Once we were all in the water, Dewey told us to start descending. I was doing ok with my regulator in and trying to descend, but I just couldn’t get more than a few feet below the surface. Not freaking out, but not knowing what my trouble was, I talked to the boat captain Miguel. Probably need more weight, he said.
Just then, Dewey and Nathan bobbed back up to the surface. Dewey may have been swearing under his breath, or maybe not, but somehow I knew he was not pleased. Turns out, Nathan needed a new tank because his O ring blew. Nathan got back up on the boat and Miguel changed out his tank. I told Dewey I was having trouble getting below the surface. He told me to stop kicking and just descend. (Duh!) Clearly my body was trying to stay alive, at the surface, even if my brain was oblivious.
I managed to get under the surface, and Nathan soon joined us, and away we went. The nice Canadian woman offered her hand to me briefly but Dewey put a stop to that and mostly I dove by myself and breathed at a level slightly below hyperventilate.
After about 50 minutes, I was at 800 psi, and we all did our safety stop and surfaced. I can tell you that one of the perks of holding Denzel’s hand last year was that I didn’t need to breathe or exert quite so much as on my own, seeing as how I was basically holding onto Denzel and just along for the ride.
At the surface we hooted and hollered for Miguel, he motored over to us, and we all hopped in for the ride back to the dive shop.
Once there, we cleaned up our gear, and walked home in the rain.
We both decided pizza sounded good and warm, so we had a quiet evening in with our delivered pie.