Day 46 - Scuba Diving

Today I got up at 5:30am to meet Kester outside the house for 6am. We walked to Rose Hill to catch a bus to St Georges. We then got on another one to Grand Anse beach, Kester got off a stop before me as he’s working at one of the construction sites of a new hotel and so I got off at the beach and walked to eco dives shop on grand Anse. It was about 8am when I got there which was an hour early but I filled out my paperwork and got my kit sorted early. Kirsten and her friend Anna met me there at half 8. Everyone liked my wetsuit :) the three of us were joined by a family of 5. We all carried out kit to the eco dive boat at the waters edge Called Nutmeg Princess. Once we were all on board we set up our kit and headed to the first dive site Tyrell bay, Boss reef. The boat was a nice size with a flat bottom and empty corners for us to enter the water from by a giant stride. When we were given the signal we all entered the water in turn. Anna wasn’t diving so she stayed on the boat. The Tyrell bay wreck was a really cool wreck at 22m that we were able to swim through and look in different rooms, it was full of all sorts of colourful fish and corals etc growing all over. Once we all had a swim around it we moved off onto the reef next to it and swam around looking at different fish and corals, we saw a giant puffer fish, lots of blue fish and a couple of lion fish that the other family were spearing because they are an invasive species. We surfaced after 50minutes and had a 20 min surface interval with cake and switched our kit to a second tank each. Kirsten didn’t do the second dive, she stayed on the boat with Anna. It was so nice to be so free when diving, almost no weights, much easier to move not in a dry suit and so nice to be able to see so far in front. Vis was about 20m! 

Our second dive site wasn’t far away, it was called Veronica L and was another drift and wreck then reef dive. We descended onto the wreck which was another boat but this time had no top and nothing inside, so was like a skeleton of a boat at 16m. There were really cool corals growing off of it and sea slugs, even a big sea cucumber. After 15 mins we moved over to a reef and swam with lots of colourful fish I wish I knew the names of, I saw a few box fish which I was very excited about, another giant puffer fish, a moray eel and blue tangs. I’d love to be able to identity all the fish we saw. After 50 minutes we started our 5m safety stop right over a wreck of a speed boat which was cool. 

After the two dives we headed back to the dive shop, rinsed our kit, paid and filled out our log books. I then headed back to Kirsten and Anna’s apartment they’re staying in for the week with them where we had lunch and waited for Kirsten’s book to download on her tablet so we could to back to the beach. But Kester finished work early so Kate came to pick me up earlier so we didn’t actually manage to go back to the beach. Kate picked Kester and I up from the Grand Anse post office at 4pm and collected kesters cousin and we were back at the house for 6pm.  

Tom made a pasta salad, roasted pumpkin and carrot and served the rest of my egg fried rice for dinner. It was a light but yummy dinner. 

I had a really great day, diving was so much fun but now I’m exhausted!