We got up
at 6:20 again this morning, had our breakfast in the apartment, and I typed up
my blog before we crossed the street to the Drop Off so that Eric could publish
the blog while we waited for the rest of the divers to arrive. However, we did end up going into the dive
shop and doing some shopping before we left for the day. We had noticed that they had some really nice
lightweight waterproof bags and once we found out for sure they were waterproof,
we could not resist.
We left the
dock again around 8:30 with four new guys from Hong Kong plus Tua, Fabrizio,
Barbara, Eric, me, and of course Fabio, our dive guide. Our first dive site of the day was Sandy
Paradise, which is always a nice dive.
There is lots of pretty coral here with a sandy sloping bottom. This site also has a coral pinnacle with 3
scorpion leaf fish and another pinnacle with a cleaner wrasse that will come
out and clean your hand if you take off your glove. Fabrizio stuck out his hand this time and the
wrasse came out and checked it out and then headed straight for his head—he has
a shaved head.
We had a
nice relaxing dive for the first dive and wandered all around the reef checking
things out. There was really no current
so speak off, so it was definitely a lazy dive.
After
getting out, we slowly motored our way to the second dive site, Ulong
Wall. After waiting an appropriate
amount of time for our surface interval, we jumped in. Since the current was not right to do Ulong
Channe,l we just did the wall, which is
also very pretty. There is always
a huge school of fish here, but this time it was interesting because there were
three or four sharks that were circling and swimming through the huge
ball. We were trying to figure out what
the sharks were doing. They did not seem
to be hunting, but when they would come out of the ball of fish there would be
about six fish following along with the shark.
We were not sure if they were using the shark to rub on, chasing him,
cleaning parasites off, or exactly what they were doing. Eric managed to get some really good shots of
the huge ball of fish with the sharks swimming through.
After this
dive we tethered the boat in shallow water and had our lunch. It was low tide at that time, so it was too
shallow to get to the beach. However, this
time we did not have to rush to eat our lunch before the rain storm hit. After a relaxing lunch, we started back for
the dive shop. Our boat diver today,
Ricky, took us for a tour through the beautiful Rock Islands on the way back,
which is always a treat.
We got back
to the dock and they unloaded everyone’s gear except for the guys from Hong
Kong who were going back out to do a third dive. We made our usual stop at the Drop Off to
check emails, etc. and then headed back across the street to our
apartment. After getting cleaned up and
Eric going through today’s pictures to see what he got, we headed down the
street to the market to get some supplies since we were not sure they would be
open on Sunday.
Later,
around 6:45 p.m., we started the walk down the road to Kramer’s restaurant
where we were meeting Fabio, Fabrizio, Barbara, and Tua for dinner at 7
p.m. We had a very nice, if not very
warm, dinner on the balcony at Kramer’s.
Although we were outside on the water’s edge, there is very little
breeze in Palau and they had no fans, so it was rather hot and steamy, but the
food and service was excellent.
At about
8:30 or so we called it a night and headed back to our apartment. Fabrizio and Barbara are not diving tomorrow
as they will be leaving the next day, so they plan on returning to the dive
shop around 3 p.m. tomorrow to pick up their gear and say goodbye to
everyone.
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