I’ve always wanted a moat

Today was not very eventful.  I am very thankful to have basically slept through the night.  We employed our host’s suggestion to sleep with the Bluetooth speaker on the headboard playing “brown noise”.  It took some finagaling because Nathan’s free Spotify account plays commercials.  We ponied up for the free month trial of the premium version and got ready for bed.

We got up to overcast skies again.  Made coffee and scrambled eggs with toast and honey for breakfast.   The rains came, and we sat on our porch reading, covered in DEET, with fans and mosquito coils going.

like 60 to 90 minutes of serious downpour

It rained hard, and straight down, for quite a long time.  Water accumulated under and around our little cabana, to the point we thought we were going to need a drawbridge to cross the water to leave for the afternoon.

Our moat… duck not included

We read on the porch in the rain, and eventually it stopped, but there was standing water everywhere.  We heated up leftover pizza for lunch in the toaster oven (no tin foil, ugh, this horrified each of us differently).

We brushed our teeth, because some personal hygiene tasks do not take a vacation.  Just don’t ask us about deodorant.

At the appointed time, we started the 35 minute trek to the dive shop.  The sun had come out and it was blazing, upper lip sweat, hot.

We got to the dive shop like 25 minutes early, and wouldn’t you know, there’s people hanging out all ready on the boat already.  These Canadians put island time to shame.  Like relax, we won’t leave without you.  At least, I don’t think we would.

Anyway, we got ready, and the boat took off.  A full boat today.  Dewey has us, and Bob & Joan, from BC, and also on board is the dude in charge, his name might be Greg, and Miriam and Claudia.  They all work for the dive shop, and were working on skills today.  It might just have been Claudia who was working on skills.  Not sure, but she seems like she’s still learning stuff, because she has an exam tomorrow.


Today’s dive site was Jack Neil, and they all dove it a few days ago when I was stuck snorkeling.


It was pretty shallow with large sand patches.  We saw a ray, heart urchin, green moray eel, a white and black spotted eel, garden eels, a cow fish, anemones,  a soft sea cucumber, drum, and juvenile lion fish.  The dive ended pretty shallow, so we were under the water for 70 minutes!

Dewey and his sea cucumber friend


After we returned to the shop and unloaded the boat, we signed up for two dives tomorrow morning with Miriam.  On the way home, we ran into the grocery store for provisions and an ice cream bar, and ran into Chover, so we also arranged tomorrow’s morning tuk tuk.


Back to our place by 4, we had a snack, changed and snorkeled before dinner.