We pretty
much have our usual routine down now for the mornings. We get up around 6:20 and have breakfast,
which for the last few days has consisted of granola with almond milk for me,
and raisin bran for Eric (all of which we brought from home). After breakfast, we get all our stuff and
camera gear ready to go and wander over to the Drop Off and use the WiFi and
sit and relax in the shade before the rest of the divers arrive to get on the
boat.
Today the
boat left around 8:30 a.m. In our group
today we had Fabio, Fabricio, Barbara, Eric, me, and another member of the
Coast Guard visiting from Guam (James) along with Tua (a dive master from
Finland). We also had a Japanese diver again,
but she dove separately with the Japanese instructor.
Our first
dive site was Blue Holes. This is a dive
site very near Blue Corner where you enter down through a really big hole
located in the shallow coral and drop down into a large underwater “cave”. There is not really much to see once you get
down inside, but it makes for some really nice silhouette shots. You then exit through a “window” on the side
and end up out on a very pretty wall.
There was a
little bit of current on this dive, but not much. We drifted along the wall and ended up down
by Blue Corner. We came across some
schools of barracuda and several turtles, a couple of which were sleeping and
another one just about ran me over. Of
course everyone was trying to get my attention to tell me it was coming right
at me (which would have been some awesome video), but I did not realize it was
there until I turned my head just to the left a bit and there it was right in
my face.
Our second
dive was at German Channel. Since we did
not have any luck finding any mantas the other day, we thought we would try
again. The current was pretty much
nonexistent again, so there was not much going on and we did a lot of swimming
around waiting and watching for something to happen and some mantas to show
up. We did end up spotting a manta
twice, but since there was no current as soon as we spotted it, it would then
disappear. The visibility in the channel
usually tends to be not so good and that is how it was today. I did get video proof that we did see a manta,
but it is not very clear.
After
German Channel we had all worked up an appetite and it was time to head to a
nice white sandy beach on an uninhibited island for some lunch. We sat in the shade near the beach and ate
our lunch and then wandered down to the beach to attempt to get our Palau 2014
intro for our video. It is a lot more
challenging than one would think, trying to write in the sand before the next
wave wipes it away. It seems when you
want a wave, you can never get one and when you don’t want one, you can’t catch
a break.
After lunch
we started the trip back to the dive shop.
The weather so far has been beautiful and sunny. As we started back today we could see storm
clouds and rain off in the distance. So
our boat driver, Logan, took us the longer way around to try and avoid the
rain. We managed to avoid it until just
a short distance from the dive shop. It
was not a heavy rain, but boy is it cold, big drops when it comes down. By the time we arrived at the dive shop it
had pretty much stopped.
We grabbed
all our gear and cameras and headed up to the rinse tank to rinse off our
cameras. After that we made a stop at
the Drop Off to get a drink and so that Eric could check his email. Then we made the short trip back across the
street to our apartment to get cleaned up.
We decided we had better make a run to the supermarket to get a few
things, so we made the walk down the road to stock up on mango nectar for me,
Coke for Eric, and of course water—all the essentials.
We then
wandered back over to the Drop Off around 6 o’clock and waited for Fabricio and
Barbara who planned on joining us around 7 p.m.
We had a nice dinner with them and Fabio ended up joining us too.
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