underwater exploration

I do not even know how to begin describing today two dives, which were my first two open water dives, besides absolutely incredible and breath taking.  We left the dock at about 8:00 this morning and headed out to our first dive site, which was about 15 minutes away.  When we stopped, you could literally see down to the ocean floor, and the water was a magnificent color blue.  The view above the water was nothing compared to that below the water...it was incredible--the most beautiful thing I think I have ever seen.  It is hard to fathom that so much exists beneath the surface of the water, when all that we usually see is a vast sea of waves.  Although, were we dove, there were no waves, and the visibility at our depth (12 meters) was about 25 meters...so, to put that into perspective, imagine getting into a 25 yard pool, sitting at the bottom, and looking straight at the other end...we could clearly see further than that.  The sand at the bottom was white, the fish beautiful, and the coral pristine.  On this dive we saw a sea horse, as well as hundreds of colorful fish.  We were on this dive for 39 minutes, which was not nearly long enough.

On our second dive we went to a new location, and again went to a depth of 12 meters. This dive was all along the reef, and again, I had never seen anything like this in my life...there is truly a whole other world under the water.  When you look in a particular area, you may see nothing at first glance, but then suddenly see more than you can even imagine...fish, incredibly colored and textured sea plants, and the most beautiful blue water.  We got to swim through the different pieces of the reef, which was awesome, and we again saw a huge number of amazing fish and other sea life. We spent about 41 minutes under water on this dive.

Thus far, my only complaint about the diving is that I have been battling a head cold (thanks Jane) and it takes my ears more time to equalize underwater.  I never before realized how much pressure there was underwater..my ears are a little sore this afternoon, but nothing a little Ibuprofen and a rum and coke can't fix!

We won't go dive again until Monday afternoon, and those will be our last two dives with an instructor.  On Tuesday we will go on an uninstructed fun dive, which I am very excited about!

Tomorrow afternoon our instructor is having a party at her house, and we have to take a boat from the dive shop to get there...we went past it on the boat today, and it looks like it's going to be a blast..and she has a pool! I hope that someday I can live in a house only accessible by boat, and that I can literally go scuba diving out my front door!

Now, I am off to go lay by the pool and read my book..the sand flies here may be the death of me, so I am settling for pool time rather than beach time.

Oh, and the food continues to be amazing...I have yet to have anything bad...but, I think I am going to have to cut back on my soda intake, but it is so so hard to resist real soda (no high fructose corn syrup) from a glass bottle with a straw!

The sun is calling my name...