Cat Eye was once again waiting for us when we walked down the drive at the appointed time. His taxi has a green paint job, and he’s accentuated it by wearing a green outfit (shorts and t-shirt) green shoes with green laces and even green glasses. Super sharp. He drove us to the dive shop where we were the last to arrive. We arranged for him to pick us up again tomorrow and hopped out of the cab.
Three gents were there at the dive shop and on our dives, and I’ve unfortunately forgotten all of their names. Two are brothers, one, a beekeeper/something else is from Missouri, the other brother must live here, or is at least staying for quite a while. The third fellow is also an accountant, also not in tax, and he got certified in Kansas at age 11, but I’ve conveniently forgotten any other details about any of them.
The waves are again pretty big, but I’m able to walk out to the dive boat without looking like a complete buffoon. At least that’s what I’m hoping for. My hair and face stayed dry, so that’s definitely better than yesterday.
Our first dive site is Flamingo Bay, named not for the bird, but the small Flamingo tongue, a type of snail that used to be prevalent here. We all gear up, and backward roll off the boat. Neal and I are going to follow the rope down, and I find that that is a lot easier to get my bearings and equalize. We set off with Marlon, the divemaster in the front, followed by the three guys, and Nathan, Neal and I in the back.
We saw another large lobster, lots of trumpetfish, a few spotted eels, and lots of other fish. I was looking at all the places I thought I might find a sea horse hiding, but I had no luck.
Neal had to take one of the divers who depleted his tank early back up to the boat, so it was the remaining four divers with Marlon. He has his hands full! One of the members of our group nearly collided with a venomous scorpion fish. Marlon saved the day and grabbed the diver and pulled him to safety.
After our safety stop we were back on the boat to have cookies and wait out our surface interval. Zhane, today’s boat captain, motored us over to the next dive site, Buccaneer. Marlon gave us our briefing – we were headed to a sunken sailboat hull!
Again, Neal and I descended following the anchor line, and we set off as a group once we reached the bottom.
The sunken boat was pretty cool, and very dark. Nathan’s using his GoPro, but I grabbed the flashlight from him and shone it in all of the dark areas of the boat. We made a full circle around the boat and Marlon made the sign for eel, so I shone my flashlight into the dark abyss and holy hell, it’s the largest green moray eel mouth that I’ve ever seen. Opening, closing, opening, closing. With me shining my flashlight, and Marlon pointing it out, we showed the eel to everyone.
Once done at the shipwreck, the group split up, with Nathan, Neal and I, along with one other diver, went to see the underwater sculpture park. The two other divers and Marlon went along the reef somewhere else.
The underwater sculpture park was weird. I think Nathan liked it, but I thought it was a bit creepy. I’m not sure if the sculptures are supposed to have meaning or not, but perhaps if I knew the story they were supposed to tell, it wouldn’t be creepy.
The sculptures are at about 15 feet deep with a bit of a current, and snorkelers and boats over head. We saw a tiny flounder on the sandy bottom and a flying gurnard. So cool.
Once back on the boat it was time to swap stories. Marlon told of a time when on a group dive, one diver stayed behind by the boat ladder and wouldn’t get out of the water. Marlon went to check on the fellow, and it turns out that while filming a large green moray eel, the eel had lunged straight towards the fellow and his camera, and the fellow had gotten so scared that he actually s#!t his pants! Neal told us that photo of the lunging eel was hanging up at the shop, so once we were back on land, we all checked it out. It did seem pretty scary, although, I’m not sure I would have been able to capture the photo.
For the remainder of the day and afternoon, we set up our beach tent out in front of the dive shop, where we ate our sandwiches, read our books, and frolicked in the waves.
At about 3 pm, a group of noisy teenagers assembles near our tent, so we decided it was a fine time to head back to our place early. We picked up our gear, hopped on a bus and headed home.
Once showered, we contemplated food delivery, but decided instead to walk to the close shipping container food court. The plan was to have Little Havana again tonight, but instead we opted for Trinidadian food. Nathan had curried chicken, and I had curried goat with bussup shot bread.