First day of diving here. We get to the dive shop on time, and get set up with our tanks and weights to dive. We had not planned on using shorty wet suits but everyone else is in one so I get my farmer john and hubby rents a shorty. While we probably would have been fine without them, there were a few thermoclines that were chilly and on the way to the first dive spot, we went through a really hard and chilly rain. It is an international group diving today as there are people from: Switzerland, Spain, UK, USA, Holland, and France but English is known by all. I demonstrate my proficency with languages by thanking everyone in a different language each time. HA.
First dive is at Adam's Apple, a place of granite rocks, some coral, and lots of small reef fish with some clams and a turtle which both my hubby and I missed
On our between dive break or our surface interval, a couple of the people on the boat were looking a bit green. Unfortunately, my hubby was one of them. He popped a dramamine and that helped a bit. I tend to take one before the boat leaves shore, just to be sure. And cookies were passed around which as everyone knows, cookies help everything, always. We move over to a large rock sticking out of the water which our divemasters inform us is for sale. Not really big enough to put a house on it so guess this is not our dream island. It used to have dugongs around it but no more.
Back into the water and we are swimming around more rocks. One of the dive masters waves us over to a large rock with an underhang. Hiding underthere is the largest ray I have ever seen in the wild and possibly even anywhere. This ray is huge, monstrous. He was bigger by far than any of the divers. We swim around to the front of the underhang and the ray is not happy
. He is fluffing up the bottom by waving his sides and stiring up the sand and gravel on the bottom. Visibility drops as he has a lot of bottom floating around him now. But we still don’t really leave so he looks for a hole in our circle and takes it and glides away from the group. He didn’t go far to get under another overhang and we found him again but he seemed to think we couldn’t see him this time so he just circled around a couple of times and settled back on the bottom. That was great. Also saw some lovely little crabs that were hidden deep in the recesses of some small coral heads. Small damselfish and anenome fish were popping in and out of the coral too but could never really get a good photo. There wasn’t much of a current but there was a surge so we were getting swept back and forth over the rocks and around the corals. I couldn’t find anything to grab onto to anchor myself long enough for a photo. Also a lovely sea cucumber that had his mouth open and his little feelers out and was eating. He reared up when I approached as if to warn me away from his good food. Didn’t bother his food but again, the surge swept me back and forth and I couldn’t ever get around to in front of his mouth before the group was gone and I had to swim after them to catch up. What is with this swimming bit??? I’d rather just go sit on the bottom and watch stuff. Good thing I have been practicing my swimming.
Time was over soon enough and we had to surface and I still didn’t have quite enough weight with the dang aluminum tank. More weight tomorrow. Back to the dive shop where the other boat had arrived back before us so we had to wait to get to the dunk tank to wash off our gear. Made arrangements to dive tomorrow morning too, with enough weight. Back to the villa which is so easy to find in the daylight. However now we have no electricity. It did come back on in the afternoon so we will be able to sleep tonight. Nice diving but the Philippines is still my favorite spot.
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